Fables of Abundance A Cultural History of Advertising in America

"Lears is one of cultural history's masters of linking popular moods and ideas with arts, philosophies, industries, and commodities, those queer things 'Abounding in metaphysical subleties and theological niceties,' as Marx said....Lears, who has been described as a leftist with Confederate instincts, or a Confederate with Leftist instincts, has found his own Lost Cause to fight for. It's not the WASPs or the hope that the puritans of progressivism can reform advertising but the hope that we can escape the dualism of the sixties unscratched. Lear wants to make the world whole again, a place where 'creativity can coexist with connectedness to the past, and with a sense of our own finitude in a reanimated universe.' A great hope. Lears is calling for nothing less than a transformation of the American psyche. A book about advertising seems a shaky foundation for the proposition, but, then, given the advertisers efforts to do the same thing, its an appropriate one."Lears, Jackson T. is the author of 'Fables of Abundance A Cultural History of Advertising in America', published 1995 under ISBN 9780465090754 and ISBN 0465090753.