Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 » (1st Edition)

Roland Marchand (1933-1997) was Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and authored numerous works on American cultural history.

"A convincing and perceptive analysis that provides a careful sociological portrait of advertising agency people in the 1920s and 1930s. Marchand has rare talent for bringing out things in the ads that the reader would not have seen alone."—Michael Schudson, University of California, San Diego

"This work illuminates some of the most important developments in twentieth-century America."—T.J. Jackson Lears, Rutgers University

Library Journal

This work, unlike other recent studies such as Stephen Fox's The Mirror Makers ( LJ 5/15/84), focuses less on the history and more on the social context of American advertising during the 1920s and 1930s. Extensively illustrated with period magazine advertisements and based on research into agency primary sources, Marchand's book makes a strong case for advertisers as ``apostles of modernity,'' championing new values for society in the selling of their products. Marchand focuses heavily on the psychology of magazine, radio, and newspaper advertising. He shows how advertising agencies made effective use of social settings, parables, and visual cliches in getting their message across to the consumer, and how advertising proved to be of therapeutic value to the public, providing guidance for coping with society's problems. A highly interesting work, especially for students of American advertising; recommended for academic and large public libraries. Louis Vyhnanek, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman