Overview

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Originally published in 1998. Drawing on both documentary and pictorial evidence, Pamela Walker Laird explores the modernization of American advertising to 1920. She links its rise and transformation to changes that affected American society and business alike, including the rise of professional specialization and the communications revolution that new technologies made possible. Laird finds a fundamental shift in the kinds of people who created advertisements and their relationships to the firms that advertised. Advertising evolved from the work of informing customers (telling people what manufacturers had to sell) to creating consumers (persuading people that they needed to buy). Through this story, Laird shows how and why—in the intense competitions for both markets and cultural authority—the creators of advertisements laid claim to ""progress"" and used it to legitimate their places in American business and culture.

Full Product Details

Author:   Pamela Walker Laird (Professor Emerita, University of Colorado at Denver)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight:   0.662kg
ISBN:  

9781421434179

ISBN 10:   1421434172
Pages:   506
Publication Date:   11 March 2020
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Part I. Production as Progress Chapter 1. Marketing Problems and Advertising Methods as America Industrialized Chapter 2. Owner-Manager Control of Advertising Chapter 3. Printers, Advertisers, and Their Products Chapter 4. Advertising Progress as a Measure of Worth Part II. Specialization as Progress Chapter 5. Early Advertising Specialists Chapter 6. Competition and Control: Business Conditions and Marketing Practices Chapter 7. The Competition to Modernize Advertising Services Part III. Consumption as Progress Chapter 8. Taking Advertisements Toward Modernity Chapter 9. Modernity and Success: Legitimatizing the Advertising Profession - I Chapter 10. The Appropriation of Progress: Legitimatizing the Advertising Profession - II Conclusion. Patrons, Agents, and the New Business of Progress

Reviews

What gives the book its considerable depth and explanatory power is the nuanced and comprehensive way in which Laird discusses the shifting contexts of American advertising . . . A complex, sophisticated analysis of how entrepreneurs and professionals create messages designed to sell goods. -- Daniel Horowitz * Journal of American History * Well-researched, tightly argued, and lavishly illustrated . . . Laird's treatment is destined to become the standard one on the history of advertising between the Civil War and the beginning of the 'New Era.'. -- Ferdinando Fasce * Reviews in American History * The strength of this book lies in the depth of evidence Laird offers . . . [Advertising agents,] Laird argues, deliberately set out to 'create consumers' rather than 'inform customers.'. -- Matthew Hilton * Business History *

The strength of this book lies in the depth of evidence Laird offers... [Advertising agents,] Laird argues, deliberately set out to 'create consumers' rather than 'inform customers.'. -- Matthew Hilton * Business History * Well-researched, tightly argued, and lavishly illustrated... Laird's treatment is destined to become the standard one on the history of advertising between the Civil War and the beginning of the 'New Era.'. -- Ferdinando Fasce * Reviews in American History * What gives the book its considerable depth and explanatory power is the nuanced and comprehensive way in which Laird discusses the shifting contexts of American advertising... A complex, sophisticated analysis of how entrepreneurs and professionals create messages designed to sell goods. -- Daniel Horowitz * Journal of American History *

Author Information

Pamela Walker Laird teaches history at the University of Colorado at Denver.

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