Irresistible empire : America's advance through twentieth-century Europe / Victoria de Grazia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Grazia, Victoria.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumer behavior--Europe--History--20th century.

Consumer behavior.

Consumers--Europe--Attitudes--History--20th century.

Consumers.

Consumption (Economics)--Europe--History--20th century.

Consumption (Economics).

Social values--Europe--History--20th century.

Social values.

Social values--United States--History--20th century.

United States--Civilization--20th century.

United States.

Civilization.

Consumers--Attitudes.

Europe.

Genre:

History

Books.

Physical Description:

586 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Harvard University Press paperback edition.

Other Title:

America's advance through twentieth-century Europe

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. ; London : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.

Summary:

The most significant conquest of the twentieth century may well have been the triumph of American consumer society over Europe's bourgeois civilization. It is this little-understood but world-shaking campaign that unfolds in de Grazia's account of how the American standard of living defeated the European way of life and achieved the global cultural hegemony that is both its great strength and its key weakness today. Tracing the peculiar alliance that arrayed New World salesmanship, statecraft, and standardized goods against the Old World's values of status, craft, and good taste, de Grazia describes how all alternative strategies fell before America's consumer-oriented capitalism--first the bourgeois lifestyle, then the Third Reich's command consumption, and finally the grand experiment of Soviet-style socialist planning.--From publisher description.

Contents:

Introduction : The fast way to peace

The Service ethic : how bourgeois men made peace with Babbittry

A decent standard of living : how Europeans were measured by the American way of life

The chain store : how modern distribution dispossessed commerce

Big-brand goods : how marketing outmaneuvered the marketplace

Corporate advertising : how the science of publicity subverted the arts of commerce

The star system : how Hollywood turned cinema culture into entertainment value

The consumer-citizen : how Europeans traded rights for goods

Supermarketing : how big-time merchandisers leapfrogged over local grocers

A model Mrs. Consumer : how mass commodities settled into hearth and home

Conclusion : How the slow movement put perspective on the fast life.

Notes:

Originally published: 2005.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0674022343

9780674022348

OCLC:

1014311115

Online:

Book review (H-Net)

Book review (H-Net)

Rezension