Packaged Pleasures: How Technology and Marketing Revolutionized Desire

Cross, Gary S.; Proctor, Robert N.

ISBN 10: 0226121275 / ISBN 13: 9780226121277

Edité par University of Chicago Press, 2014

Former library book; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. N° de réf. du vendeur G0226121275I4N10

Synopsis :

From the candy bar to the cigarette, records to roller coasters, a technological revolution during the last quarter of the nineteenth century precipitated a colossal shift in human consumption and sensual experience. Food, drink, and many other consumer goods came to be mass-produced, bottled, canned, condensed, and distilled, unleashing new and intensified surges of pleasure, delight, thrill--and addiction.

In Packaged Pleasures, Gary S. Cross and Robert N. Proctor delve into an uncharted chapter of American history, shedding new light on the origins of modern consumer culture and how technologies have transformed human sensory experience. In the space of only a few decades, junk foods, cigarettes, movies, recorded sound, and thrill rides brought about a revolution in what it means to taste, smell, see, hear, and touch. New techniques of boxing, labeling, and tubing gave consumers virtually unlimited access to pleasures they could simply unwrap and enjoy. Manufacturers generated a seemingly endless stream of sugar-filled, high-fat foods that were delicious but detrimental to health. Mechanically rolled cigarettes entered the market and quickly addicted millions. And many other packaged pleasures dulled or displaced natural and social delights. Yet many of these same new technologies also offered convenient and effective medicines, unprecedented opportunities to enjoy music and the visual arts, and more hygienic, varied, and nutritious food and drink. For better or for worse, sensation became mechanized, commercialized, and, to a large extent, democratized by being made cheap and accessible. Cross and Proctor have delivered an ingeniously constructed history of consumerism and consumer technology that will make us all rethink some of our favorite things.

À propos des auteurs: Gary S. Cross is distinguished professor of modern history at Pennsylvania State University and the author of many books including All-Consuming Century: How Commercialism won in Modern America and The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century.

Robert N. Proctor is professor of the history of science at Stanford University and the author of many books including Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis and Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge.

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Packaged Pleasures: How Technology and ...
Éditeur : University of Chicago Press
Date d'édition : 2014
Reliure : Hardcover
Etat : Very Good
Etat de la jaquette : No Jacket