From Publishers Weekly
According to this absorbing cultural history of how Americans' personal and public identities have evolved in relationship with consumer goods, the battle between consumerism and anti-consumerism has been a defining struggle of 20th-century life. While Americans have always actively partaken in consumer culture, Cross (Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood) notes that there have also been equally strong movements and even aesthetic traditions that resist consumerism and materialism, ranging from Puritanism and strains of immigrant Catholicism to the 1960s counterculture and the simplicity movements exemplified by E.F. Schumacher's 1973 classic Small Is Beautiful and Ralph Nader's consumer rights work. Still, the ethos of commercialism won out by the end of the century. Deftly integrating the theoretical arguments of anti-consumerists (from Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class to Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders) with a complex analysis of the history of U.S. buying and socializing patterns, Cross explains why. His provocative study investigates the Americanizing effect of amusement parks on immigrant identity in the early century; how the manufacture of the inexpensive radio promoted domesticity in the 1930s; and how the conflation of toys and fast food radically altered children's consumption patterns. While continually critiquing free market consumerism, Cross makes clear how consumerism shaped, and continues to shape, our lives today. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
From Library Journal
The triumph of consumerism in 20th-century America has received mixed reviews, which indicates that this country's puritanical heritage has proved to be no match for the market forces dominating our contemporary life. Cross (history, Pennsylvania State Univ.) has written extensively about American society. His Kids' Stuff examined changes in children's toys, but this time he focuses on products and trends that appeal to adults, from the introduction of Henry Ford's Model T in 1908 to the current American love affair with bargain shopping. Cross asserts that even the Depression, the two world wars, and the counterculture of the Sixties did no lasting damage to the growth of commercialism. Exploring the economic causes of this triumph and documenting the social and environmental costs of America's desire for goods, Cross argues that consumerism diverts people from ethnic and class warfare. Even though his study is far more suggestive than conclusive, it will still nicely supplement other recent works on consumerism. Academic and large public libraries should consider.DJudy Solberg, George Washington Univ. Lib., Washington, DC
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
