<div><B>&ldquo;A lively history&rdquo; of how TV advertising became a defining force in American culture between 1946 and 1964</B><B>(<I>Technology and Culture</I>).</B><BR />  <BR /> The two decades following World War II brought television into homes and, of course, television commercials. Those commercials, in turn, created an image of the postwar American Dream that lingers to this day.<BR />  <BR /> This book recounts how advertising became a part of everyday lives and national culture during this midcentury period, not only reflecting consumers&rsquo; desires but shaping them, and broadcasting a vivid portrait of comfort, abundance, ease, and happy family life and, of course, keeping up with the Joneses. As the author asserts, it&rsquo;s nearly impossible to understand our culture without contemplating these visual celebrations of conformity and consumption, and this insightful, entertaining volume of social history helps us do just that.</div>

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<div><B>The history of our attitudes toward the possibilities of tomorrow:</B><B>&ldquo;A fascinating trek through American future visions from the 1920s to the present.&rdquo; &mdash;Lori C. Walters, Ph.D., University of Central Florida</B><BR />  <BR /> The future is not a fixed idea but a highly variable one that reflects the values of those who are imagining it. By studying the ways that visionaries imagined the future&mdash;particularly that of America&mdash;in the past century, much can be learned about the cultural dynamics of the times.<BR />  <BR /> In this social history, Lawrence R. Samuel examines the future visions of intellectuals, artists, scientists, businesspeople, and others to tell a chronological story about the history of the future in the past century. He defines six separate eras of future narratives from 1920 to the present day, and argues that the milestones reached during these years&mdash;especially related to air and space travel, atomic and nuclear weapons, the women&rsquo;s and civil rights movements, and the advent of biological and genetic engineering&mdash;sparked the possibilities of tomorrow in the public&rsquo;s imagination, and helped make the twentieth century the first century to be significantly more about the future than the past. The idea of the future grew both in volume and importance as it rode the technological wave into the new millennium, and the author tracks the process by which most people, to some degree, have now become futurists as the need to anticipate tomorrow accelerates.</div>

Lawrence R. Samuel
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Books By Lawrence R. Samuel (2 Books)

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