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Fables Of Abundance: A Cultural History Of Advertising In America Paperback – November 3, 1995

by Jackson Lears (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 24 ratings
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Fables of Abundance ranges from the traveling peddlers of early modern Europe to the twentieth-century American corporation, exploring the ways that advertising collaborated with other cultural institutions to produce the dominant aspirations and anxieties in the modern United States.
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  1. Print length
    512 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    November 3, 1995
  4. Dimensions
    6 x 1.16 x 9 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0465090753
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0465090754
  7. Lexile measure
    1410L
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

History professor Lears's study of the rise of American consumerism explores the repressive aspects of advertising's equating of material abundance with social status.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

American advertisements have become perhaps the most pervasive social icons in the modern world. This book traces their rise against a richly varied backdrop. Its range encompasses literature, religion, and the visual arts, as well as economics, public policy, and the history of medicine. Its cast of characters includes a host of remarkable figures in or around advertising, from P. T. Barnum and Theodore Dreiser to John B. Watson and Joseph Cornell. The book explores the ways that advertising collaborated with other cultural institutions to produce what have become the dominant aspirations, anxieties, and even notions of personal identity in the twentieth-century United States. Moving from the carnivals and market fairs of Renaissance Europe to the traveling peddlers of nineteenth-century America, Jackson Lears shows how early advertisers encouraged a new kind of magical thinking, detached from religious traditions and geared to an emerging market society. While patent medicine advertising's promise of magical self-transformation and exotic sensuality posed challenges to moral standards, advertisers themselves eventually sought to contain the subversive potential of this promise even as they continued to conjure it up.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books (November 3, 1995)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465090753
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465090754
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1410L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.16 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 24 ratings

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Jackson Lears

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4.5 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Jessica
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great condition
    Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    this book was about 20 something dollars. i paid 4 and some change for this new book!!!!! it got in the mail around four days later with the standard mail, meaning, they shipped it as soon as one day from purchase. am super satisfied with the service. will definitely purchase future books from this store.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars No problems here!
    Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2017
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    Product arrived quickly and as expected!
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  • JField
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2015
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    Dense and/but brilliant.
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  • pnotley@hotmail.com
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, and counterintuitive
    Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2000
    Most people find advertising very irritating. This is not only understandable, but necessary and just. But what is it about advertising that should put one's teeth on edge? It is easy to believe that advertising encourages a world of greed and gaudy consumerism, a life of sterile self-indulgence. This was the view of the great American critic Thorstein Veblen. But one should avoid this temptation. In this book Jackson Lears provides a book that is not only revelatory about advertising but will help the reader about culture, nostalgia, memory, even life itself.
    Lears, a historian who is not afraid to quote Marxists, agrees with Adorno that Veblen's attack on consumerism was an "attack against culture." Veblen represented a puritanical producerism that did not recognize the aesthetic and imaginative elements of consumption. Lears throughout this subtle and evocative book argues that advertising did not present the triumph of hedonism, but in fact the regulation of consumption to a strict regime of productivity, a trade-off between "routinized labor and zestful consumption." The book does not follow a simple narrative. But it does provide a fascinating account with many pregant apercus about the cold presence of an inhumane positivism, as well as the flaws of both the jargon of authenticity and the New York Intellectuals conflation of politics and style. Starting with the image of the breast and the cornocopia, and going on to the illusions of the Plain speech tradition, Lears looks not only at advertisements, but also cites much literature and theory to help him along. Melville, Dreiser, James and Proust are all invoked, Little Nemo and Krazy Kat are properly praised, coming to a benediction looking at the special achievement of Joseph Cornell and his boxes. Some readers of this review may find this summary pretentious, but those who go on to read Lears will find much that is truly revelatory.
    24 people found this helpful
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  • Nysocboy
    1.0 out of 5 stars Does American History End in 1900?
    Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2001
    Verified Purchase
    Advertising has become ubiquitous, on television, in the subway, on web pages, even on clothing. Even our ideas and opinions, religions and romances, have become commodified, slanted, and marketed. And most of the flood of commodification is the product of the postwar communications boom. Before 1950, one had newspapers, magazines, radio, and the occasional newsreel. Before 1900, one had placards and fliers.
    So why is this book exclusively about the 19th century? The 19th century deserves 1 chapter, not all 400 pages. I am only vaguely interested in P.T. Barnum, but fascinated by how Tony the Tiger recreated American breakfasts during the Baby Boom. Or if Lear wanted to aim his book at historians, why the audacity to title it "a cultural history of American advertising"? It omits the most interesting eras of American advertising.
    28 people found this helpful
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