Book description
Fables of Abundance ranges from the traveling peddlers of early modern Europe to the twentieth-century American corporation, exploring the ways that advertising collaborated with other cultural institutions to produce the dominant aspirations and anxieties in the modern United States.
Why read it?
1 author picked Fables Of Abundance as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
It always seemed strange to me that the ad business has so often been terribly sniffy about the world of popular culture on which it depends.
Then, when I read this sociological history of the ad business, I understood why - how, from the very early days, ad agencies wanted to distance themselves from the disreputable medicine shows of the past and from the legacy of P.T. Barnum by aspiring to become a respectable "profession." Perhaps that was understandable. But in one way or another, this obsession has been the root of most of their mistakes ever since.
From Paul's list on The best books to make sense of the madness of advertising.
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