Vance Packard and American Social Criticism - Softcover

Horowitz, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807857351 ISBN 13: 9780807857359

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011

Synopsis

Vance Packard's bestselling books--Hidden Persuaders (1957), Status Seekers (1959), and Waste Makers (1960)--taught the generation that came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s about the dangers posed by advertising, social climbing, and planned obsolescence. Like Betty Friedan and William H. Whyte, Jr., Packard (1914- ) was a journalist who played an important role in the nation's transition from the largely complacent 1950s to the tumultuous 1960s. He was also one of the first social critics to benefit from and foster the newly energized social and political consciousness of this period. Based in part on interviews with Packard, Daniel Horowitz's intellectual biography focuses on the period during which Packard left magazine writing to author his most famous works of social criticism. Horowitz traces the influence of Packard's education and early years in rural Pennsylvania, providing a deeper understanding of his thought and his later books. Packard's life, Horowitz contends, illuminates the dilemmas of a freelance social critic without inherited wealth or academic affiliation. His career also expands our understanding of how one era shaped the next, underscoring how the adversarial 1960s drew on the mass culture of the previous decade.

Originally published in 1994.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

About this title

Book Description

"[Horowitz] offers a wealth of insight into twentieth-century journalism, homegrown American liberalism, and the role of the popular intellectual."-- American Historical Review

About the Author

Daniel Horowitz, professor of American studies and history at Smith College, is author of The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875-1940.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0807857351
• ISBN 13: 9780807857359
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400