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The All-Consuming Nation - Chasing the American Dream Since World War II (Hardcover)
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The All-Consuming Nation - Chasing the American Dream Since World War II (Hardcover)
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In his 1958 "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon
argued that the freedom to consume defined the American way of
life. High wages, full employment, new technologies, and a rapid
growth in population known as the "Baby Boom" ushered in a golden
age of economic growth. By the end of the twentieth century,
consumerism triumphed over communism, socialism, and all other isms
seeking to win hearts and minds around the world. Advertising,
popular culture, and mass media persuaded Americans that shopping
was both spiritually fulfilling and a patriotic virtue. Mark Lytle
argues that Nixon's view of consumer democracy contained fatal
flaws - if unregulated, it would wholly ignore the
creativedestruction that, in destroying jobs, erodes the capacity
to consume. The All-Consuming Nation also examines how planners
failed to take into account the environmental costs, as early
warning signs-whether smog over Los Angeles, the overuse of toxic
chemicals such as DDT, or the Cuyahoga River in flames-provided
evidence that all was not well. Environmentalists from Aldo
Leopold, Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich to Ralph Nader and Al Gore
cautioned that modern consumerism imposed unsustainable costs on
the natural world. Not for lack of warning, climate change became
the defining issue of the twenty-first century. The All-Consuming
Nation investigates the environmental and sociocultural costs of
the consumer capitalism framework set in place in the 20th century,
shedding light on the consequences of a national identity forged
through mass consumption.
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