This study explores how magazines became the first mass medium in the USA and how they expressed a new American culture based on "dreams" of a better future. Schneirov argues that the birth of the popular magazine at the turn of the century helped to form the foundations of contemporary consumer culture. Revolutionary concepts and products from the skyscraper to the automobile were extolled in these publications as symbols of the might of science and technology that would irrevocably change modern living. Photographs from 19th-and 20th-century magazines interspersed throughout the text illustrate the impetus to dream of a new social order.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Schneirov sees Cosmopolitan (no relation to today's Cosmopolitan), Munsey's, and McClure's as three prominent magazines in the center of major shifts in American popular culture, attracting national audiences and appealing to Americans' dreams of technological progress and social utopias. The author (sociology, Duquesne Univ.) advances an interdisciplinary approach to culture as the dynamic interplay of economic, social, and ideological factors. He eschews explanations of class hegemony and economic or technological determinism for the emergence of popular (i.e., not highbrow) magazines and consumer mass culture. Though more discussion is needed of racial/ethnic minorities, the working classes, and regional (e.g., Southern) cultures, Schneirov richly describes the magazines' editors and articles on health and muckraking. Best for graduate collections in sociology, mass communications, U.S. history, and culture studies.
Charles L. Lumpkins, Bloomsburg Univ. Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Charles L. Lumpkins, Bloomsburg Univ. Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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