Surveys the new practices of advertising, mass distribution of goods, and the birth of the inexpensive mass-audience magazine at the end of the 19th century, and their role in the creation of the American professional-managerial class. Focuses on magazine publishing, careers of key personalities in the publishing world, and the role of fiction in the magazines. For students and general readers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An inside look at cultural industries, featuring interviews with key players from such companies as Twentiety-Century Fox, National Public Radio, and Coca-Cola. To what extent do moviemakers, television and radio producers, advertising executives, and marketers merely reflect trends, beliefs, and desires that already exist in our culture, and to what extent do they consciously shape our culture to their own ends? In-depth interviews with ten executives from the "culture industry" and five scholarly analyses examine that question, and address the issues of power and authority, meaning and identity, that arise when cultural producers define and react to audiences. In their own words, leaders from companies like Twentieth-Century Fox, National Public Radio, and Warner Bros. Television describe their perception of the sometimes paradoxical relationship between culture and what influences it. For example, while the former president of Coca-Cola North America claims the company has never tried to create a trend, he notes that "we market in more countries than belong to the United Nations [a product that] has insinuated itself into the lives of the people to a point where it has become-you know, it's there." These reflections by key players provide an unprecedented view, as editor Richard Ohmann writes, "into the ways cultural producers imagine or know markets and how such knowledge figures in their decisions about what events, experiences, and products to make."

In this fascinating and highly acclaimed study of the development of consumer society in the United States, Richard Ohmann traces the birth and subsequent growth of mass culture that came with the rise of general-interest magazines and brand-name products. 20 photos.

In a sweeping colourful history that spans over two centuries of American culture, Moore examines the role of religion in America as it appropriated (and was appropriated by) commercial culture. He reveals the centrality of religion, and the marketplace, in American popular culture.

Black Chicagoans were at the centre of a national movement in the 1940s and '50s, when African Americans across the country first started to see themselves as part of a single culture. Green argues that this period engendered a unique cultural and commercial consciousness, fostering ideas of racial identity that remain influential.

Selling Yoga looks at how modern yoga developed into the self-developmental products and services that are widely consumed across the world today.