An All-Consuming Century : Why Commercialism Won in Modern America Hardcover - 2000
by Cross, Gary
- Used
Description
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Details
- Title An All-Consuming Century : Why Commercialism Won in Modern America
- Author Cross, Gary
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition First Edition
- Condition Used - Good
- Pages 352
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Columbia University Press, New York
- Date 2000-09-14
- Illustrated Yes
- Features Illustrated
- Bookseller's Inventory # 5673132-6
- ISBN 9780231113120 / 0231113129
- Weight 1.31 lbs (0.59 kg)
- Dimensions 9.26 x 6.27 x 1.04 in (23.52 x 15.93 x 2.64 cm)
- Ages 22 to UP years
- Grade levels 17 - UP
-
Themes
- Chronological Period: 20th Century
- Chronological Period: 21st Century
- Library of Congress subjects Consumers - United States
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 99087282
- Dewey Decimal Code 306.309
First line
From the jacket flap
By 1930 a distinct consumer society had emerged in the United States in which the taste, speed, control, and comfort of goods offered new meanings of freedom, thus laying the groundwork for a full-scale ideology of consumer's democracy after World War II. From the introduction of Henry Ford's Model T ("so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one") and the innovations in selling that arrived with the department store (window displays, self service, the installment plan) to the development of new arenas for spending (amusement parks, penny arcades, baseball parks, and dance halls), Americans embraced the new culture of commercialism -- with reservations. However, Gary Cross shows that even the Depression, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the inflation of the 1970s made Americans more materialistic, opening new channels of desire and offering opportunities for more innovative and aggressive marketing. The conservative upsurge of the 1980s and '90s indulged in its own brand ofself-aggrandizement by promoting unrestricted markets. The consumerism of today, thriving and largely unchecked, no longer brings families and communities together; instead, it increasingly divides and isolates Americans.
Consumer culture has provided affluent societies with peaceful alternatives to tribalism and class war, Cross writes, and it has fueled extraordinary economic growth. The challenge for the future is to find ways to revive the still valid portion of the culture of constraint and control the overpowering success of the all-consuming twentieth century.
Media reviews
Citations
- Library Journal, 08/09/2000, Page 0
- Publishers Weekly, 07/03/2000, Page 0
- Reference and Research Bk News, 02/01/2001, Page 68
- Univ PR Books for Public Libry, 01/01/2001, Page 18
