Neal Gabler shows us today's astonishing conversion of life itself into Entertainment - Life the Movie.

Revealing what now unites phenomena as diverse as modern art, President Clinton versus Kenneth Starr, the O. J.

Simpson trial, the Unabomber murders, and Elizabeth Taylor's marriages, Gabler demonstrates how our hunger for entertainment and the massive exploitation of that hunger have combined to make everything from religion to politics to painting to the news into branches of show business; how Life the Movie has generated and popularized its own stars - the rich and famous; and how all of us are not only an audience for the life spectacular, but also performance artists acting out our own dramas within it.

Gabler traces the phenomenal rise of Entertainment as it challenges high culture. He also shows how entertainment, most notably with the arrival of the movies, comes to dominate the national consciousness by introducing a new way of seeing, until it seems that every endeavor and idea must become part of the grand, ever-growing, ongoing Big Show or risk invisibility.