![]() He attacks a host of critics of commercialism, including Thorstein Veblen, Vance Packard, Ralph Nader and John Kenneth Galbraith, reducing them to snooty straw men who would deny ordinary Americans glamorous pleasures that were once exclusively enjoyed by affluent elites. If this book has a thesis, it's a point Twitchell, a University of Florida professor, repeatedly makes: Consumers are not victims of commercialism but have eagerly participate in it. These parts are presented as witty aphorisms, not coherent arguments, and read like 30-second TV spots strung together into an infomercial for materialism. The best parts are an entertaining and insightful history of American commercialism, from the emergence of advertising in newspapers, magazines, radio and television, to the development of the supermarket, packaged products such as Wonder Bread and mass marketing of expensive luxury items.īut these sections are wrapped around a cleverly contrarian but ultimately exasperating defense of commercialism in all its forms. ![]() ![]() Perhaps because he's searching for something new to say, "Lead Us Into Temptation" is really two books in one. And, with his earlier books, "Adcult USA" and "Carnival Culture," he became the nation's leading dissector and defender of commercial culture. Twitchell has a job that could exist only in today's America: being a professor of both English andĪdvertising. ![]() ![]() Twitchell ARTICLEĬolumbia University Press, 336 pp, $24.95 Book Review: "LEAD US INTO TEMPTATION" by James B. ![]()
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