Advertising the American Dream

Advertising the American Dream PDF Author: Roland Marchand
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520403657
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
It has become impossible to imagine our culture without advertising. But how and why did advertising become a determiner of our self-image? Advertising the American Dream looks carefully at the two decades when advertising discovered striking new ways to play on our anxieties and to promise solace for the masses. As American society became more urban, more complex, and more dominated by massive bureaucracies, the old American Dream seemed threatened. Advertisers may only have dimly perceived the profound transformations America was experiencing. However, the advertising they created is a wonderfully graphic record of the underlying assumptions and changing values in American culture. With extensive reference to the popular media—radio broadcasts, confession magazines, and tabloid newspapers—Professor Marchand describes how advertisers manipulated modern art and photography to promote an enduring "consumption ethic." This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986. It has become impossible to imagine our culture without advertising. But how and why did advertising become a determiner of our self-image? Advertising the American Dream looks carefully at the two decades when advertising discovered striking new w

Advertising the American Dream

Advertising the American Dream PDF Author: Roland Marchand
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520403657
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Get Book Here

Book Description
It has become impossible to imagine our culture without advertising. But how and why did advertising become a determiner of our self-image? Advertising the American Dream looks carefully at the two decades when advertising discovered striking new ways to play on our anxieties and to promise solace for the masses. As American society became more urban, more complex, and more dominated by massive bureaucracies, the old American Dream seemed threatened. Advertisers may only have dimly perceived the profound transformations America was experiencing. However, the advertising they created is a wonderfully graphic record of the underlying assumptions and changing values in American culture. With extensive reference to the popular media—radio broadcasts, confession magazines, and tabloid newspapers—Professor Marchand describes how advertisers manipulated modern art and photography to promote an enduring "consumption ethic." This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986. It has become impossible to imagine our culture without advertising. But how and why did advertising become a determiner of our self-image? Advertising the American Dream looks carefully at the two decades when advertising discovered striking new w

A History of Advertising

A History of Advertising PDF Author: Jef I Richards
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538141221
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Advertising has always been a uniquely influential social force. It affects what we buy, what we believe, who we elect, and so much more. We tend to know histories of other massive social forces, but even people working in advertising often have a tenuous grasp of their field's background. This book slices advertising's history into a smörgåsbord of specific topics like advertising to children, political advertising, people's names as advertisements, 3D advertising, programmatic buying, and so much more, offering a synopsis of how each developed and the role it played in this discipline. In doing so, many firsts are identified, such as the first full-page color magazine advertisement, and the first point-of-purchase advertisement. This book also reaches back farther in search of the earliest advertisements, and it tells the story of the variety of techniques used by our ancestors to promote their products and ideas. Part textbook, part reference, the book is an advertising museum in portable form suitable for all levels of students, scholars, and arm-chair enthusiasts. (Please note that the hardback and eBook formats of this book feature full-color printing. The paperback is grayscale.)

Financing the American Dream

Financing the American Dream PDF Author: Lendol Calder
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
Once there was a golden age of American thrift, when citizens lived sensibly within their means and worked hard to stay out of debt. The growing availability of credit in this century, however, has brought those days to an end--undermining traditional moral virtues such as prudence, diligence, and the delay of gratification while encouraging reckless consumerism. Or so we commonly believe. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Lendol Calder shows that this conception of the past is in fact a myth. Calder presents the first book-length social and cultural history of the rise of consumer credit in America. He focuses on the years between 1890 and 1940, when the legal, institutional, and moral bases of today's consumer credit were established, and in an epilogue takes the story up to the present. He draws on a wide variety of sources--including personal diaries and letters, government and business records, newspapers, advertisements, movies, and the words of such figures as Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and P. T. Barnum--to show that debt has always been with us. He vigorously challenges the idea that consumer credit has eroded traditional values. Instead, he argues, monthly payments have imposed strict, externally reinforced disciplines on consumers, making the culture of consumption less a playground for hedonists than an extension of what Max Weber called the "iron cage" of disciplined rationality and hard work. Throughout, Calder keeps in clear view the human face of credit relations. He re-creates the Dickensian world of nineteenth-century pawnbrokers, takes us into the dingy backstairs offices of loan sharks, into small-town shops and New York department stores, and explains who resorted to which types of credit and why. He also traces the evolving moral status of consumer credit, showing how it changed from a widespread but morally dubious practice into an almost universal and generally accepted practice by World War II. Combining clear, rigorous arguments with a colorful, narrative style, Financing the American Dream will attract a wide range of academic and general readers and change how we understand one of the most important and overlooked aspects of American social and economic life.

Selling the Dream

Selling the Dream PDF Author: John M. Hood
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031303687X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
The process of producing goods and services is relatively easy to recognize as socially beneficial. But television ads? Telemarketers? Jingles? Junk mail? It is popular to view these commercial activities as inherently wasteful or manipulative, marginally informative or entertaining, at best. In Selling the Dream, John Hood takes the provocative stand that advertising images and sales pitches are actually part of the goods and services themselves, delivering an essential component of the consumer's experience. As such, they are inextricably linked to the basic tenets of the free-market system, and, in the boldest of terms, Hood argues that commercial communication is morally consistent with the principles of our democratic society, including freedom of choice, competition, and innovation. Tracing the history of advertising from Ancient Roman times to the present, he offers a colorful account of advertising in its cultural context and addresses such controversial issues as the promotion of harmful and immoral products (such as alcohol and tobacco), marketing to children, the role of advertising in service industries such as health care and education, and the impact of the Internet and other new media on the conduct of commerce. In the process, he offers a compelling perspective on advertising and its essential role in business, communication, and popular culture.

Our Kids

Our Kids PDF Author: Robert D. Putnam
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476769907
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
"The bestselling author of Bowling Alone offers [an] ... examination of the American Dream in crisis--how and why opportunities for upward mobility are diminishing, jeopardizing the prospects of an ever larger segment of Americans"--

Restoring the American Dream

Restoring the American Dream PDF Author: Robert Ringer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470893354
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Completely updated edition of one of the classic works of conservative literature Long before the advent of conservative talk radio and Fox News, Robert Ringer was an outspoken advocate for the cause of freedom and free enterprise. In this classic work–updated for the 21st century–Ringer’s basic premise is that liberty must be given a higher priority than all other objectives. The economic and political calamity that he warned about in the late seventies is now upon us, and his new edition of Restoring the American Dream is sure to resonate with the feelings of today’s angry voters. In his book, Ringer explains that: • The American Dream is not about increased government benefits and government-created “rights,” but, rather, about individualism, self responsibility, and freedom–including the freedom to succeed or fail on one’s own • The barbarians are not at the gates; they are already inside • Ordinary citizens no longer tell their elected officials what to do. Rather, government tells them what to do–and backs it up with force • The desire of people to band together to bring about quick, short term solutions to their problems through government intervention has perpetuated a cycle that has nearly destroyed the American Dream With Washington continuing to expand government power and spending at a record pace, Restoring the American Dream is a voice of sanity in a world gone mad.

Reprogramming the American Dream

Reprogramming the American Dream PDF Author: Kevin Scott
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062879898
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
** #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller ** In this essential book written by a rural native and Silicon Valley veteran, Microsoft’s Chief technology officer tackles one of the most critical issues facing society today: the future of artificial intelligence and how it can be realistically used to promote growth, even in a shifting employment landscape. There are two prevailing stories about AI: for heartland low- and middle-skill workers, a dystopian tale of steadily increasing job destruction; for urban knowledge workers and the professional class, a utopian tale of enhanced productivity and convenience. But there is a third way to look at this technology that will revolutionize the workplace and ultimately the world. Kevin Scott argues that AI has the potential to create abundance and opportunity for everyone and help solve some of our most vexing problems. As the chief technology officer at Microsoft, he is deeply involved in the development of AI applications, yet mindful of their potential impact on workers—knowledge he gained firsthand growing up in rural Virginia. Yes, the AI Revolution will radically disrupt economics and employment for everyone for generations to come. But what if leaders prioritized the programming of both future technology and public policy to work together to find solutions ahead of the coming AI epoch? Like public health, the space program, climate change and public education, we need international understanding and collaboration on the future of AI and work. For Scott, the crucial question facing all of us is this: How do we work to ensure that the continued development of AI allows us to keep the American Dream alive? In this thoughtful, informed guide, he offers a clear roadmap to find the answer.

Oscar's American Dream

Oscar's American Dream PDF Author: Barry Wittenstein
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade
ISBN: 0525707697
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
If you want to see 20th century American history unfold before your eyes, stand on a city street corner and watch it change! It all starts when an immigrant named Oscar opens a barber shop... When Oscar lands on Ellis Island, he has only a suitcase and a down payment in his hands. And he has a dream-- to own his own barbershop. After it opens on the corner of Front St. and Second Ave, Oscar's barbershop becomes a beloved local fixture... until the day Oscar decides to move on and become a subway conductor. Over the years, this barbershop will change hands to become a lady's clothing store, then a soup kitchen. A coffee shop follows, then the space becomes an army recruitment center, then a candy shop. As the years pass and the world changes, the proud corner store stands tall, watching American history unfold around it. Barry Wittenstein and debut husband-and-wife illustration team Kristen and Kevin Howdeshell tell the rich, fascinating story of key moments in American history, as reflected through the eyes--and the patrons--of the corner store.

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream PDF Author: Karen Sternheimer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317689682
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, Second Edition considers how major economic and historical factors shaped the nature of celebrity culture as we know it today, retaining the first edition’s examples from the first celebrity fan magazines of 1911 to the present and expanding to include updated examples and additional discussion on the role of the internet and social media in today’s celebrity culture. Equally important, the book explains how and why the story of Hollywood celebrities matters, sociologically speaking, to an understanding of American society, to the changing nature of the American Dream, and to the relation between class and culture. This book is an ideal addition to courses on inequalities, celebrity culture, media, and cultural studies.

Brought to You By

Brought to You By PDF Author: Lawrence R. Samuel
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292774761
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
“A lively history” of how TV advertising became a defining force in American culture between 1946 and 1964(Technology and Culture). The two decades following World War II brought television into homes and, of course, television commercials. Those commercials, in turn, created an image of the postwar American Dream that lingers to this day. This book recounts how advertising became a part of everyday lives and national culture during this midcentury period, not only reflecting consumers’ desires but shaping them, and broadcasting a vivid portrait of comfort, abundance, ease, and happy family life and, of course, keeping up with the Joneses. As the author asserts, it’s nearly impossible to understand our culture without contemplating these visual celebrations of conformity and consumption, and this insightful, entertaining volume of social history helps us do just that.