An All Consuming Century

Download or read book An All-consuming Century written by Gary S. Cross and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The victory of consumerism in America was not a foregone conclusion. The United States has traditionally been home to the most aggressive and thoughtful critics of consumption such as Puritanism and Prohibition. This work offers a history of how market forces came to dominate American life.

Download or read book Consumer Society in American History written by Lawrence B. Glickman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers the most comprehensive and incisive exploration of American consumer history to date, spanning the four centuries from the colonial era to the present.

Download or read book Consuming Subjects written by Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on feminist criticism, cultural studies, and new historicist ideas, Kowaleski-Wallace suveys eighteenth century literary texts, material object, and cultural events to illuminate the ways in which women are both controlled by and empowered through images of consumption.

Download or read book All Consuming Images written by Stuart Ewen and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative, compelling, and entertaining look at how the power of images dominates every aspect of our lives.

Download or read book The All-Consuming Nation written by Mark H. Lytle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his 1958 "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon argued that the freedom to consume defined the American way of life. High wages, full employment, new technologies, and a rapid growth in population known as the "Baby Boom" ushered in a golden age of economic growth. By the end of the twentieth century, consumerism triumphed over communism, socialism, and all other isms seeking to win hearts and minds around the world. Advertising, popular culture, and mass media persuaded Americans that shopping was both spiritually fulfilling and a patriotic virtue. Mark Lytle argues that Nixon's view of consumer democracy contained fatal flaws -- if unregulated, it would wholly ignore the creativedestruction that, in destroying jobs, erodes the capacity to consume. The All-Consuming Nation also examines how planners failed to take into account the environmental costs, as early warning signs--whether smog over Los Angeles, the overuse of toxic chemicals such as DDT, or the Cuyahoga River in flames--provided evidence that all was not well. Environmentalists from Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich to Ralph Nader and Al Gore cautioned that modern consumerism imposed unsustainable costs on the natural world. Not for lack of warning, climate change became the defining issue of the twenty-first century. The All-Consuming Nation investigates the environmental and sociocultural costs of the consumer capitalism framework set in place in the 20th century, shedding light on the consequences of a national identity forged through mass consumption.

Download or read book Consumed Nostalgia written by Gary Cross and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For many of us, modern memory is shaped less by a longing for the social customs and practices of the past or for family heirlooms handed down over generations and more by childhood encounters with ephemeral commercial goods and fleeting media moments in our age of fast capitalism. This phenomenon has given rise to communities of nostalgia whose members remain loyal to the toys, television, and music of their youth. They return to the theme parks and pastimes of their upbringing, hoping to reclaim that feeling of childhood wonder or teenage freedom. Consumed nostalgia took definite shape in the 1970s, spurred by an increase in the turnover of consumer goods, the commercialization of childhood, and the skillful marketing of nostalgia. Gary Cross immerses readers in this fascinating and often delightful history, unpacking the cultural dynamics that turn pop tunes into oldies and childhood toys into valuable commodities. He compares the limited appeal of heritage sites such as Colonial Williamsburg to the perpetually attractive power of a Disney theme park and reveals how consumed nostalgia shapes how we cope with accelerating change. Today nostalgia can be owned, collected, and easily accessed, making it less elusive and often more fun than in the past, but its commercialization has sometimes limited memory and complicated the positive goals of recollection. By unmasking the fascinating, idiosyncratic character of modern nostalgia, Cross helps us better understand the rituals of recall in an age of fast capitalism.

Download or read book Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century written by Tamara S. Wagner and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century aims to bring together detailed analyses of the cultural myths, or fictions, of consumption that have shaped discourses on consumer practices from the eighteenth century onwards. Individual essays provide an excitingly diverse range of perspectives, including musicology, philosophy, history, and art history, cultural and postcolonial studies as well as the study of literature in English, French, and German. The broad scope of this collection will engage audience both inside and outside academia interested in the politics of food and consumption in eighteenth and nineteenth century culture.