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"Irate listeners attacking anti-union advertisers, boycotts of soap operas, a bitter ex-federal official who took up the cause of consumers--Newman brings us all of this and more, revealing in her stunning new book how twentieth-century consumers--especially women--contested commercial radio in its ...

"Irate listeners attacking anti-union advertisers, boycotts of soap operas, a bitter ex-federal official who took up the cause of consumers--Newman brings us all of this and more, revealing in her stunning new book how twentieth-century consumers--especially women--contested commercial radio in its glory years. With tremendous clarity and analytical sophistication, she shows that far from 'duped consumers, ' radio listeners were savvy, sassy, and effective activists who talked back plenty to commercial radio. Analyzing the dynamics of as a contested zone between listeners, advertisers, radio stations, and new consumer intellectuals, Newman deftly and persuasively reframes our understanding of the cultural politics of consumption."--Dana Frank, author of "Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism

"Cultural historians often claim that audiences were far from passive victims of mass media manipulation, but Kathy Newman is among the first to reveal how ordinary people actually responded. Focusing,on the major mass medium of the 1930s and 1940s, the radio, Newman brilliantly tracks the dialectical process through which audience attention became a commodity that broadcasters set out to sell to sponsors and then how listeners, often women, turned their new-found importance to their own ends as assertive consumers. This is cultural history at its best, bringing together as it does the influence of intellectuals, the workings of cultural institutions, and the reactions of popular audiences."--Lizabeth Cohen, author of "A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

"Lively and accessible, Newman's fascinating account of the characters and concernsbehind anti-commercial activism illuminates an overlooked facet of radio history. Her cast of middle class reformers who used radio's own commercialized address to mobilize the consumer movement reminds us of advertising's comp

In Living Up to the Ads Simone Weil Davis examines commodity culture's impact on popular notions of gender and identity during the 1920s. Arguing that the newly ascendant advertising industry introduced three new metaphors for personhood -- the ad man, the female consumer, and the often female ...

In Living Up to the Ads Simone Weil Davis examines commodity culture's impact on popular notions of gender and identity during the 1920s. Arguing that the newly ascendant advertising industry introduced three new metaphors for personhood -- the ad man, the female consumer, and the often female advertising model or spokesperson -- Davis traces the emergence of the pervasive gendering of American consumerism.

Materials from advertising firms -- including memos, manuals, meeting minutes, and newsletters -- are considered alongside the fiction of Sinclair Lewis, Nella Larsen, Bruce Barton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Davis engages such books as Babbitt, Quicksand, and Save Me the Waltz in original and imaginative ways, asking each to participate in her discussion of commodity culture, gender, and identity. To illuminate the subjective, day-to-day experiences of 1920s consumerism in the United States, Davis juxtaposes print ads and industry manuals with works of fiction. Capturing themaverick voices of some of the decade's most influential advertisers and writers, Davis reveals the lines that were drawn between truths and lies, seduction and selling, white and black, and men and women.

Davis's methodology challenges disciplinary borders by employing historical, sociological, and literary practices to discuss the enduring links between commodity culture, gender, and identity construction. Living Up to the Ads will appeal to students and scholars of advertising, American studies, women's studies, cultural studies, and early-twentieth-century American history.

"This book provides a mirror to our past--a past that has been ignored or overshadowed for too long." From the foreword by Alex Haley Kern-Foxworth chronicles the stereotypical portrayals of Blacks in advertising from the turn of the century to the present. Beginning with slave advertisements, she ...

"This book provides a mirror to our past--a past that has been ignored or overshadowed for too long." From the foreword by Alex Haley Kern-Foxworth chronicles the stereotypical portrayals of Blacks in advertising from the turn of the century to the present. Beginning with slave advertisements, she discusses how slavery led naturally to the stereotypes found in early advertisements. From the end of the slave era to the culmination of the Civil Rights movement, advertising portrayed Blacks as Aunt Jemimas, Uncle Bens, and Rastuses, and the author explores the psychological impact of these portrayals. With the advent of the Civil Rights movement, organizations such as CORE and NAACP voiced their opposition and became active in the elimination of such advertising. In the final chapters, the volume examines the reactions of consumers to integrated advertising and the current role of Blacks in advertising. Its truly novel subject matter and its inclusion of vintage and contemporary advertisements featuring Blacks,make this a valuable work.