William R. Leach

Land of Desire

Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This monumental work of cultural history was nominated for a National Book Award. It chronicles America's transformation, beginning in 1880, into a nation of consumers, devoted to a cult of comfort, bodily well-being, and endless acquisition. 24 pages of photos.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Random House USA Inc
• Seitenzahl: 560
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. September 1994
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 207mm x 134mm x 32mm
• Gewicht: 582g
• ISBN-13: 9780679754114
• ISBN-10: 0679754113
• Artikelnr.: 22267886

Autorenporträt

William R. Leach is a professor of history at Columbia University. His books include Butterfly People, Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in American Life, and Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture, which was a National Book Award finalist.

Inhaltsangabe

PREFACE
 
Introduction: The Land of Desire and the Culture of Consumer Capitalism
 
I: Strategies of Enticement
 
1. The Dawn of a Commercial Empire
 
“The Master Institutions of Civilized Life” • From Marble Palaces to Masses
of Goods and Capital • The Retail Wars of the 1890s • “The Greatest
Merchant in America” • The Crisis of Distribution
 
2. Facades of Color, Glass, and Light
 
Elbert Hubbard and Eye Appeal • Signs of the Times • The Careers of Robert
Ogden and Maxfield Parrish • L. Frank Baum and TheShowWindow • A Maze of
Glittering Crystal • Form out of Chaos • Arthur Fraser’s Temple
 
3. Interiors
 
Dismantling Doorsteps and the New Intimacy with Goods • “The Stage upon
Which the Play Is Enacted” • Seductions for the Masses and the Classes •
The “Eliminating” Power of the Central Idea • A New Child World and
“Paradise in the Toy Department”
 
4. Fashion and the Indispensable Thing
 
The Growth of Fashion and a Gigantic Garment Industry • Women Buyers and
the “Queens” of Paris Couture • Rodman Wanamaker and the Queen’s Slippers •
Fete de Paris: The Fashion Show • The Garden of Allah
 
5. Ali Baba’s Lamp: Service for Private and Public Benefit
 
Service as a “Profitless Ideal” • Holiness or Commercial Hospitality
• “Maximum Max” and Paying the Price in Court •
Customer as Guest in “Self-Sufficient Citadels” • “Distributors
of Happiness” • Gemutlichkeit and the Utopia of Joseph Urban
• A New Commercial Cultural Order
 
II: Circuits of Power
 
6. “Business Runs the World”: Institutional Coalitions Behind the New Order
 
“Searching Out” and Satisfying “Human Wants” • The Great
Museums and the New Curators • City Pageants and Hobnobbing
with Mayors • The Widening Sphere of Public Action •
Better Babies and Better Deliveries • The Paterson Pageant
 
7. Wanamaker’s Simple Life and the Moral Failure of Established Religion
 
Wanamaker as Liberal Evangelist and Institution Builder • The
Simple Life and Pastor Wagner • A Day at Bethany • Fairy
Tales or Private Parables • Sin, Consensus, and Institution
Building • Down the Slippery Slope
 
8. Mind Cure and the Happiness Machine
 
“The New Healers” • Simon Patten’s Political Economy of
Mind Cure • Pollyanna and the Popular Culture of Mind Cure
• L. Frank Baum and Theosophy • An Affirmative American
Fairy Tale
 
III: Managing a Dream Culture:1922-1932
 
9. “An Age of Consolidation”: Goods, Money, and Mergermania
 
“Consumptionism” • Goods and Money “Flooding the Country”.
Chains Across the Country • Investment Bankers and
Mergermania • “The Power Is All in Business”: Chains of Department
Stores • Paul Mazur and Harvard’s Helping Hand
• The Urban Landscape of Desire
 
10. “Sell Them Their Dreams”
 
The Consumer Credit Apparatus • Air-Conditioned Murals and
“One White Fur” • “Brokers in Beauty” • In Style with
Dorothy Shaver • Accessorizing on the Grand Scale • The
Pseudoevents of Edward L. Bernays
 
11. The Spectacles
 
The Rainbow House and the Palace of Fashion • The Commercial
Parade • Toys, Spectacles, and the Child Experts •
Ragamuffins and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade • America’s
Mecca of Light and Color • “All the Colours of the Rainbow
Belong to Mr. Bilge”
 
12. Herbert Hoover’s Emerald City and Managerial Government
 
Herbert Hoover’s Pursuit of Knowledge • Commerce as Database
and Julius Klein, Master Broker • “Horne, Sweet Home”
• Dissent and the “Torments of Desire”
 
Conclusion: Legacies