As McCarthyism swept across the United States and capitalism was king, white America enjoyed a feeling of pride and security that was reflected in advertising.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Second in a series of books featuring advertising by era, All-American Ads of the 50s offers page after page of products that made up the happy-days decade. The start of the cold war spurred a buying frenzy and a craze for new technology that required ad campaigns to match. The nuclear age left its mark all over the advertisements, with a spotlight on planes, rockets, and even mushroom clouds. Shiny, big, beautiful cars abound, styled to keep up with the space age. Editor Jim Heimann, in his essay "From Poodles to Presley, Americans Enter the Atomic Age," explains: "Car designers came up with exaggerated tail fins for automobiles to express this new accelerated speed." Modernist home interiors look slick and shiny with their molded plastic furniture and linoleum floors. While clothing and furniture styles look strangely contemporary--a testament to our current obsession with vintage--some things have definitely changed. A baby sells Marlboro cigarettes! Also included are chapters on movies, food, and travel. --J.P. Cohen
Review
Leafing through the pair is like walking through a massive design exhibition on the mores of those two decades. -- Los Angeles Times, 3/7/02
These bundles of history are more fun than smoking Chesterfields while driving a De Soto. -- Creativity, March 2002
They provide a record of American everyday life of a bygone era in a way that nothing else can. -- Associated Press, March 2002
Who would ever have imagined that ads could say so much about our recent past? -- Los Angeles Times, 3/7/02
These bundles of history are more fun than smoking Chesterfields while driving a De Soto. -- Creativity, March 2002
They provide a record of American everyday life of a bygone era in a way that nothing else can. -- Associated Press, March 2002
Who would ever have imagined that ads could say so much about our recent past? -- Los Angeles Times, 3/7/02
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Capitalism at work.,
This review is from: All-American Ads of the 50s (Paperback)
Taschen does it again! An amazing book of 928 pages with 1400 illustrations. The material is arranged in ten chapters and each has dozens of relevant magazine ads. What I particularly liked about this massive volume was the way all this colorful material has been handled, not a singe ad has been angled or overlapped on another. Here the pace is generated by running one ad over a spread, enlarging a section over a spread (basically for creative purposes) having one ad per page or in a minority of cases running four ads on a page. I think the designers took the view that reading the ad copy was as important as looking at all the amazing pictures. I also liked the range of material, besides the obvious consumer product advertising there are plenty of trade ads from the commercial sector. Stunning though this material is I do have a couple of minor objections, a few of the ads do have text that has run off the page and I would have prefered to see a thin black line define the edge of the ads where they are four to the page. This is the first volume of a series that will cover All-American ads of past decades and if they are all is good as this book it will be an incredible collection.
UPDATE My review originally appeared with the 928 page edition of this wonderful book and Amazon have also placed it with a mini paperback edition but you can still get original from some Marketplace Sellers. ISBN 3822811580.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book, with just one proviso,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: All-American Ads of the 50s (Paperback)
On reading quite a bit about this book online before ordering, I was convinced that All American Ads of the 50s so thoroughly matched my interests that it was going to be the last book I would have to buy for a while, and certainly the last book on this subject. --Wouldn't it be nice if life really WAS that simple? This book is the ultimate vault of old ad gold, and one is hesitant to criticize at all. But... The one thing about All American Ads that really bugs me is the big grainy blowups that fill too many spreads here. The full page ads are joys forever. But jumping back and forth between creamy, crisp, photographically reduced perfection of reproduction on one hand, and overextended, grainy enlargements of detail on the other makes for a somewhat disjoint experience. This one gripe aside, it is a book you absolutely MUST have if you care about old ads and old popular and sociopolitical culture.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Series,
By
This review is from: All-American Ads of the 50s (Paperback)
This is an absolutely fabulous series -- I eagerly anticipate the remaining volumes. Certainly they are excellent and enjoyable volumes for people interested in American design and popular culture, but I'm also finding them a great way to start teaching my young daughter about American history. Looking at 1950s liquor ads led to a discussion of Prohibition, which led to a discussion of gangster movies, and why everything in the 50s was trying to look like a rocket while consumer items of the 30s and 40s were rounded and "streamlined..." and so on.It's a great way for children to realize that clues about history (and the hidden agendas of marketers, for that matter) are everywhere around us, and that while wars and the deeds of the great are part of history, there's more to it than that.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
|
|
