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 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.)

Pulitzer Prize winner Hedrick Smith’s new book is an extraordinary achievement, an eye-opening account of how, over the past four decades, the American Dream has been dismantled and we became two Americas. In his bestselling The Russians, Smith took millions of readers inside the Soviet Union. In The Power Game, he took us inside Washington’s corridors of power. Now Smith takes us across America to show how seismic changes, sparked by a sequence of landmark political and economic decisions, have transformed America. As only a veteran reporter can, Smith fits the puzzle together, starting with Lewis Powell’s provocative memo that triggered a political rebellion that dramatically altered the landscape of power from then until today. This is a book full of surprises and revelations—the accidental beginnings of the 401(k) plan, with disastrous economic consequences for many; the major policy changes that began under Jimmy Carter; how the New Economy disrupted America’s engine of shared prosperity, the “virtuous circle” of growth, and how America lost the title of “Land of Opportunity.” Smith documents the transfer of $6 trillion in middle-class wealth from homeowners to banks even before the housing boom went bust, and how the U.S. policy tilt favoring the rich is stunting America’s economic growth. This book is essential reading for all of us who want to understand America today, or why average Americans are struggling to keep afloat. Smith reveals how pivotal laws and policies were altered while the public wasn’t looking, how Congress often ignores public opinion, why moderate politicians got shoved to the sidelines, and how Wall Street often wins politically by hiring over 1,400 former government officials as lobbyists. Smith talks to a wide range of people, telling the stories of Americans high and low. From political leaders such as Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Martin Luther King, Jr., to CEOs such as Al Dunlap, Bob Galvin, and Andy Grove, to heartland Middle Americans such as airline mechanic Pat O’Neill, software systems manager Kristine Serrano, small businessman John Terboss, and subcontractor Eliseo Guardado, Smith puts a human face on how middle-class America and the American Dream have been undermined. This magnificent work of history and reportage is filled with the penetrating insights, provocative discoveries, and the great empathy of a master journalist. Finally, Smith offers ideas for restoring America’s great promise and reclaiming the American Dream. Praise for Who Stole the American Dream? “[A] sweeping, authoritative examination of the last four decades of the American economic experience.”—The Huffington Post “Some fine work has been done in explaining the mess we’re in. . . . But no book goes to the headwaters with the precision, detail and accessibility of Smith.”—The Seattle Times “Sweeping in scope . . . [Smith] posits some steps that could alleviate the problems of the United States.”—USA Today “Brilliant . . . [a] remarkably comprehensive and coherent analysis of and prescriptions for America’s contemporary economic malaise.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Smith enlivens his narrative with portraits of the people caught up in events, humanizing complex subjects often rendered sterile in economic analysis. . . . The human face of the story is inseparable from the history.”—Reuters

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.

Much has been written about the housing policies of the Depression and the Postwar period. Much less has been written of the houses built as a result of these policies, or the lives of the families who lived in them. Using the houses of Levittown, Long Island, as cultural artifacts, this book examines the relationship between the government-sponsored, mass-produced housing built after World War II, the families who lived in it, and the society that fostered it. Beginning with the basic four-room, slab-based Cape Cods and Ranches, Levittown homeowners invested time and effort, barter and money in the expansion and redesign of their houses. The author shows how this gradual process has altered the socioeconomic nature of the community as well, bringing Levittown fully into the mainstream of middle-class America. This book works on several levels. For planners, it offers a reassessment of the housing policies of the 1940s and '50s, suggesting that important lessons remain to be learned from the Levittown experience. For historians, it offers new insights into the nature of the suburbanization process that followed World War II. And for those who wish to understand the subtle workings of their own domestic space within their lives, it offers food for speculation.

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.

In examining the economic and cultural trs that expressed America's expansionist impulse during the first half of the twentieth century, Emily S. Rosenberg shows how U.S. foreign relations evolved from a largely private system to an increasingly public one and how, soon, the American dream became global.