Book Review Books
Note: each student in the class should select a different book.
If you want to select a book that is not listed here, please talk to me about it first.
Benjamin Barber, Jihad Vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books, 1995).
T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Politics: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Alexandra Chasin, Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
Elizabeth Chin, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).
Alison Clarke, Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America (Smithsonian, 1999).
Gary Cross, The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture (Oxford University Press, 2004).
James J. Farrell, One Nation Under Goods: Malls and the Seductions of American Shopping (Smithsonian Books, 2003).
Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
Ellen Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Marilyn Halter, Shopping for Identity: The Marketing of Ethnicity (New York: Schocken Books, 2000).
Andrew Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in Postwar Consumer Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
Jenna Weissman Joselit, A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001).
John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York: Hill & Wang, 1978).
Walter LaFeber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism (New York: WW Norton, 1999).
R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: D. McKay, 1957).
Janice Williams Rutherford, Selling Mrs. Consumer: Christine Frederick and the Rise of Household Efficiency (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003).
Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies’ Home Journal, Gender and the Promises of Consumer Culture. (New York: Routledge, 1995.)
Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998).
Susan Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999).
Richard Tedlow, New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America (New York: Basic Books, 1990).
James B. Twitchell, Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
Robert E. Weems, Jr. Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1998).
Sharon Zukin, Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture (Routledge, 2003).
Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (Knopf, 2003).
Philip Gold, Advertising, Politics, and American Culture: From Salesmanship to Therapy (Paragon Press, 1987).
Matthew McAllister, The Commercialization of American Culture: New Advertising, Control, and Democracy (SAGE publications, 1996).
Ivan Preston, The Tangled Web They Weave: Truth, Falsity, and Advertisers (U of Wisconsin Press, 1994).