Customer Reviews

The Toothpaste of Immortality: Self-Construction in the Consumer Age (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)

5 star:		(2)
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This book makes you realize just how pervasive 'consumer culture' is in our everyday lives. While that may bother some people, this book is an enjoyable read because, thoguh intelligent and well researched, its not a dense academic book.

I picked it up on a whim, and read through the first thirty pages before realizing that if I didn't get up and buy it, I'd be sittign in the bookstore all day reading it. Read the excerpt here, see if it does the same to you.

Plenty of books document consumer history: but how many examine how consumer habits and choices shape consumer psyche and the nature of everyday living? The Toothpaste of Immortality just such, drawing important connections between everyday living and the mundane and how the very nature of being and perception are changed by consumerism. Chapters blend philosophy with consumer analysis to provide a surprisingly entertaining as well as revealing examination of consumer habits essential to any college-level collection strong in sociology.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

If this book does not have you asking yourself questions and rethinking your daily routines nothing will

It's easy to dismiss consumerism as a modern scourge, draining of us of our will and distracting us from the spiritual and ethical business of life. But this book is a fascinating inquiry into the ways that we consume products and services and advertising as a meditation on our selves and on our collective myths and symbols. I found it rather heartening as well as interesting.

One negative in particular: He takes a fairly condescending view of women in several places. He goes pretty far off tone at one point by prescribing against yellow gemstones on older women because she doesn't have the jewel's same "inner fire of life, significance, and energy" so "by their contrast, jewels set off the signs of decay"! Ick.

As well his discussion of sunglasses: how does he propose to know that women wear sunglasses to "protect and hide their inner selves, their thoughts, their souls" while for men they are "instruments and symbols of power"?

But generally I really enjoyed this as an analysis of the particular challenges and opportunities we have to "actualize" our selves in a materialistic civilization.