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Bad Habits - Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior and Swearing in American History (Paperback, New edition)
Loot Price: R927
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Bad Habits - Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior and Swearing in American History (Paperback, New edition)
Series: The American Social Experience
Expected to ship within 12 - 19 working days
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The vast majority of Americans have, at one point or another,
gotten drunk, smoked, dabbled with drugs, gambled, sworn, or
engaged in adultery. During the 1800s, "respectable" people
struggled to control these behaviors, labeling them "bad" and the
people who indulged in them unrespectable. In the twentieth
century, these minor vices were transformed into a societal complex
of enormous and pervasive influence. Yet the general belief
persists that these activities remain merely harmless "bad habits",
individual transgressions more than social problems. Not so, argues
distinguished historian John C. Burnham in this pioneering study.
In Bad Habits, Burnham traces the growth of a veritable minor
vice-industrial complex illustrating the special heritage shared by
these vices. As this vice complex grew, activities that might have
been harmless, natural, and sociable fun resulted in fundamental
social change. When Burnham set out to explore the influence of
these bad habits on American society, he sought to discover why so
many "good" people engaged in activities that many, including they
themselves, considered "bad". What he found, however, was a
coalition of economic and social interests in which the single
minded quest for profit allied with the values of the Victorian
saloon underworld and bohemian rebelliousness. This combination
radically inverted common American standards of personal conduct.
Bad Habits, then, describes, in words and pictures how more and
more Americans learned to value hedonism and self-gratification -
to smoke and swear during World War I, to admire cabaret night
life, and to reject schoolmarmish standards in the age of
Prohibition. Tracing the evolution of each ofthe bad habits,
Burnham tells how liquor control boards encouraged the consumption
of alcohol; how alcoholic beverage producers got their workers
deferred from the draft during World War II; how convenience stores
and accounting firms pursued profits by pushing legalized gambling;
how "swinging" Playboy bankrolled a drug advocacy group; how
advertising and television made the Marlboro man a national hero;
how drug paraphernalia were promoted by national advertisers; how a
practical joker/drug addict caused a shortage of kitty litter on
Long Island; and how the evolution of an entire sex therapy
industry helped turn sexual experience into a new kind of
commodity. Altogether, a lot of people made a lot of money. But
what, the author asks, did these changes cost American society?
This illustrated tour de force by one of the most distinctive and
important voices in social history reveals John C. Burnham at his
provocative and controversial best.
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