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Diversity in the United States: A Cultural History of the Past
Century is a cultural history of diversity in the United States
over the past one hundred years. Diversity-defined here as
Americans of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds-is
currently very much in the national conversation. The book explores
diversity in a historical context, bringing a much-needed
perspective on what is a passionate theme in contemporary American
society. Told chronologically and divided into five twenty-year
eras, the book sheds new light on the important role that diversity
has played in our national identity. The subject is parsed through
the voices of intellectuals and journalists who have weighed in on
its many different dimensions. The primary argument of the work is
that the concept of diversity has functioned as a key site of both
congruence and division in the United States for the past one
hundred years, providing a sense of who we are as a people while at
the same time exposing inequities based on race, ethnicity, and
religion. Both an academic audience and the many readers of
non-fiction will find the book to be a valuable and insightful
resource.
Age Friendly: Ending Ageism in America is a rallying call to make
the United States a more equitable and just nation in terms of age.
"Age friendliness" means being inclusive towards older people as
workers, consumers, and citizens, something that can't be said to
exist today. The United States and, especially, Big Business, are
notoriously age-unfriendly places, a result of our obsession with
youth. Virtually all aspects of everyday life in America will be
impacted by the doubling or tripling of the number of older people
over the next two decades, more reason to adopt age friendliness as
a cause. Age Friendly shows how large companies are in an ideal
position to address the aging of America and, in the process,
benefit from making their organizations more age friendly. Because
of its economic power and commitment to diversity in the workplace,
Big Business-specifically the Fortune 1000-has the opportunity and
responsibility to take a leadership role in changing the narrative
of aging in America. The book shows that age friendliness offers
the possibility of bridging gaps not just between younger and older
people, but those based on income, class, race, gender, politics,
and geography. More than anything else, Age Friendly presents a
bold and counterintuitive idea-aging is a positive thing for
businesses, individuals, and society as a whole-and we should
embrace it rather than fear it. While ageism is a pervasive force
in America that, like racism and gender discrimination, runs
contrary to our democratic ideals, there is some good news. An age
friendly movement is spreading in America and around the world as a
growing number of cities and towns strive to better meet the needs
of their older residents. Aa well, a concerted effort is being made
to convince Big Business that an intergenerational workforce is in
the best interests of not just older employees but the companies
themselves. Age brings experience, perspective, and wisdom-just the
right skill set for both short- and long-term decision-making. The
aging of America also presents major implications for businesses in
terms of marketing to older consumers. Baby boomers are still the
key to the economy despite marketers' focus on youth, much in part
to their collective wealth and propensity to consume. Age friendly
marketing thus makes much sense due to "the longevity economy,"
i.e., the billions of dollars that older consumers spend each year
and the goldmine that looms in the future as they become an even
bigger percentage of the population. Finally, Age Friendly
discusses how more corporations are pursuing social responsibility
in addition to maximizing profits-an ideal opportunity for
corporations to demonstrate good citizenship by supporting age
friendliness on a local, state, or national level.
Age Friendly: Ending Ageism in America is a rallying call to make
the United States a more equitable and just nation in terms of age.
"Age friendliness" means being inclusive towards older people as
workers, consumers, and citizens, something that can't be said to
exist today. The United States and, especially, Big Business, are
notoriously age-unfriendly places, a result of our obsession with
youth. Virtually all aspects of everyday life in America will be
impacted by the doubling or tripling of the number of older people
over the next two decades, more reason to adopt age friendliness as
a cause. Age Friendly shows how large companies are in an ideal
position to address the aging of America and, in the process,
benefit from making their organizations more age friendly. Because
of its economic power and commitment to diversity in the workplace,
Big Business-specifically the Fortune 1000-has the opportunity and
responsibility to take a leadership role in changing the narrative
of aging in America. The book shows that age friendliness offers
the possibility of bridging gaps not just between younger and older
people, but those based on income, class, race, gender, politics,
and geography. More than anything else, Age Friendly presents a
bold and counterintuitive idea-aging is a positive thing for
businesses, individuals, and society as a whole-and we should
embrace it rather than fear it. While ageism is a pervasive force
in America that, like racism and gender discrimination, runs
contrary to our democratic ideals, there is some good news. An age
friendly movement is spreading in America and around the world as a
growing number of cities and towns strive to better meet the needs
of their older residents. Aa well, a concerted effort is being made
to convince Big Business that an intergenerational workforce is in
the best interests of not just older employees but the companies
themselves. Age brings experience, perspective, and wisdom-just the
right skill set for both short- and long-term decision-making. The
aging of America also presents major implications for businesses in
terms of marketing to older consumers. Baby boomers are still the
key to the economy despite marketers' focus on youth, much in part
to their collective wealth and propensity to consume. Age friendly
marketing thus makes much sense due to "the longevity economy,"
i.e., the billions of dollars that older consumers spend each year
and the goldmine that looms in the future as they become an even
bigger percentage of the population. Finally, Age Friendly
discusses how more corporations are pursuing social responsibility
in addition to maximizing profits-an ideal opportunity for
corporations to demonstrate good citizenship by supporting age
friendliness on a local, state, or national level.
"If there was a book like Brought to You By when I came into the
advertising business, it would have saved me ten years of hard
knocks. I plan to buy it by the box load and hand it out as my gift
to any young person who expresses interest in getting into the
advertising business." -- Jerry Della Femina, President, Jerry
Della Femina & Partners "The most exciting and comprehensive
explanation of how a single medium rose to be one of the most
definitive forces in our culture." -- John Gerzema, Managing
Director, Fallon NYC "A fun-filled journey of reminiscences for
those of us old enough to remember the early days of TV
advertising. Samuel also provides a powerful analogy that puts the
roles of regulation, freedom, and the profit motive of the Internet
in perspective." -- Paul J. Groncki, Ph.D., VP, Director of
Marketing Research, J.P. Morgan
"Incredibly thought-provoking for anyone interested in the
shaping of our commercial culture." -- Megan Kent, Executive
Director, Brand Planning, Bozell Worldwide
"All scholars interested in how and why advertisers used
commercials to advance a triumphant and optimistic American Way
will find Brought to You By an exciting read." -- Lary May,
Professor of American Studies, University of Minnesota
"This important book examines and credits, warts and all, the
undeniable engine behind our country's thirst for growth and belief
in endless possibilities-- the television commercial." -- Mark R.
Morris, Chairman, Bates North America "For the general reader or
the specialist seeking to understand the commercial roots of our
experience economy, I cannot imagine a more perceptive guide." --
John F. Sherry, Jr., Professor of Marketing, Northwestern
University "Fascinating reading, capturing a pivotal moment in the
shaping of the most powerful generation in history, baby boomers."
-- Benny Sommerfeld, Business Development Manager, Volvo Cars
N.A.
Aging is a preoccupation shared by beauty bloggers, serious
journalists, scientists, doctors, celebrities-arguably all of adult
America, given the pervasiveness of the crusade against it in
popular culture and the media. We take our youth-oriented culture
as a given but, as Lawrence R. Samuel argues, this was not always
the case. Old age was revered in early America, in part because it
was so rare. Indeed, it was not until the 1960s, according to
Samuel, that the story of aging in America became the one we are
most familiar with today: aging is a disease that science will one
day cure, and in the meantime, signs of aging should be prevented,
masked, and treated as a source of shame. By tracing the story of
aging in the United States over the course of the last half
century, Samuel vividly demonstrates the ways in which getting
older tangibly contradicts the prevailing social values and
attitudes of our youth-obsessed culture. As a result, tens of
millions of adults approaching their sixties and seventies in this
decade do not know how to age, as they were never prepared to do
so. Despite recent trends that suggest a more positive outlook,
getting old is still viewed in terms of physical and cognitive
decline, resulting in discrimination in the workplace and
marginalization in social life. Samuels concludes Aging in America
by exhorting his fellow baby boomers to use their economic clout
and sheer numbers to change the narrative of aging in America.
What do consumers really want? In the mid-twentieth century,
many marketing executives sought to answer this question by looking
to the theories of Sigmund Freud and his followers. By the 1950s,
Freudian psychology had become the adman's most powerful new tool,
promising to plumb the depths of shoppers' subconscious minds to
access the irrational desires beneath their buying decisions. That
the unconscious was the key to consumer behavior was a new idea in
the field of advertising, and its impact was felt beyond the
commercial realm.Centered on the fascinating lives of the brilliant
men and women who brought psychoanalytic theories and practices
from Europe to Madison Avenue and, ultimately, to Main Street,
"Freud on Madison Avenue" tells the story of how midcentury
advertisers changed American culture. Paul Lazarsfeld, Herta
Herzog, James Vicary, Alfred Politz, Pierre Martineau, and the
father of motivation research, Viennese-trained psychologist Ernest
Dichter, adapted techniques from sociology, anthropology, and
psychology to help their clients market consumer goods. Many of
these researchers had fled the Nazis in the 1930s, and their
decidedly Continental and intellectual perspectives on secret
desires and inner urges sent shockwaves through WASP-dominated
postwar American culture and commerce.Though popular, these
qualitative research and persuasion tactics were not without
critics in their time. Some of the tools the motivation researchers
introduced, such as the focus group, are still in use, with
"consumer insights" and "account planning" direct descendants of
Freudian psychological techniques. Looking back, author Lawrence R.
Samuel implicates Dichter's positive spin on the pleasure principle
in the hedonism of the Baby Boomer generation, and he connects the
acceptance of psychoanalysis in marketing culture to the rise of
therapeutic culture in the United States.
Future Trends: A Guide to Decision Making and Leadership in
Business is the first and only book to link a decision-making and
leadership platform to trends pointing to the future. By
identifying sixty global, long-term trends and detailing how
businesspeople can leverage them in both the short- and long-term,
the book provides readers with a powerful body of knowledge
unavailable anywhere else. In Future Trends, consultant and
futurist Larry Samuel: *Identifies sixty significant and
opportunistic global, long-term trends; *Details how businesspeople
can leverage each trend in both the short- and long-term via a
decision-making and leadership platform; *Helps readers be
recognized as a trusted source and "go-to" person in their
respective field by becoming more fluent in the future; *Takes a
360-degree, holistic view of tomorrow by examining cultural,
economic, political, social, scientific, and technological trends;
*Steers clear from here-today-gone-tomorrow things and experiences
that comprise most glimpses into the emerging cultural landscape
Future Trends is divided into six sections covering Cultural
Trends, Economic Trends, Political Trends, Social Trends,
Scientific Trends, and Technological Trends. Each section includes
ten trends that indicate where the world is heading. Many futurists
focus on technology, forgetting the fact that the ways in which
people actually live their lives are shaped by many other factors.
Future Trends thus takes a 360-degree, holistic view of tomorrow,
offering readers a fuller understanding of life on Earth over the
next couple of decades.
“Psychology has stepped down from the university chair into the
marketplace” was how the New York Times put it in 1926. Another
commentator in 1929 was more biting. Psychoanalysis, he said, had
over a generation, “converted the human scene into a neurotic.”
Freud first used the word around 1895, and by the 1920s
psychoanalysis was a phenomenon to be reckoned with in the United
States. How it gained such purchase, taking hold in virtually every
aspect of American culture, is the story Lawrence R. Samuel tells
in Shrink, the first comprehensive popular history of
psychoanalysis in America. Arriving on the scene at around the same
time as the modern idea of the self, psychoanalysis has both shaped
and reflected the ascent of individualism in American society.
Samuel traces its path from the theories of Freud and Jung to the
innermost reaches of our current me-based, narcissistic culture.
Along the way he shows how the arbiters of culture, high and low,
from public intellectuals, novelists, and filmmakers to Good
Housekeeping and the Cosmo girl, mediated or embraced
psychoanalysis (or some version of it), until it could be
legitimately viewed as an integral feature of American
consciousness.
The future is not a fixed idea but a highly variable one that
reflects the values of those who are imagining it. By studying the
ways that visionaries imagined the future-particularly that of
America-in the past century, much can be learned about the cultural
dynamics of the time. In this social history, Lawrence R. Samuel
examines the future visions of intellectuals, artists, scientists,
businesspeople, and others to tell a chronological story about the
history of the future in the past century. He defines six separate
eras of future narratives from 1920 to the present day, and argues
that the milestones reached during these years-especially related
to air and space travel, atomic and nuclear weapons, the women's
and civil rights movements, and the advent of biological and
genetic engineering-sparked the possibilities of tomorrow in the
public's imagination, and helped make the twentieth century the
first century to be significantly more about the future than the
past. The idea of the future grew both in volume and importance as
it rode the technological wave into the new millennium, and the
author tracks the process by which most people, to some degree,
have now become futurists as the need to anticipate tomorrow
accelerates.
Widely considered the most complex of human emotions, romantic love
both shapes and reflects core societal values, its expression
offering a window into the cultural zeitgeist. In popular culture,
romantic love has long been a mainstay of film, television and
music. The gap between fictitious narratives of love and real-life
ones is, however, usually wide-American's expectations of romance
and affection often transcend reality.Tracing the history of love
in American culture, this book offers insight into both the
national character and emotional nature.
Telling the full story of the American Way of Life (or more simply
the American Way) in the United States over the course of the last
century reveals key insights that add to our understanding of
American culture. Lawrence R. Samuel argues that since the term was
popularized in the 1930s, the American Way has served as the
primary guiding mythology or national ethos of the United States.
More than that, however, this work shows that the American Way has
represented many things to many people, making the mythology a
useful device for anyone wishing to promote a particular agenda
that serves his or her interests. A consumerist lifestyle supported
by a system based in free enterprise has been the ideological
backbone of the American Way, but the term has been attached to
everything from farming to baseball to barbecue. There really is no
single, identifiable American Way and never has been-it becomes
clear after tracing its history-making it a kind of Zelig of belief
systems. If our underlying philosophy or set of values is amorphous
and nebulous, then so is our national identity and character,
Samuel concludes, implying that the meaning of America is elastic
and accommodating to many interpretations. This unique thesis sets
off this work from other books and helps establish it as a seminal
resource within the fields of American history and American
studies.
The American writer - both real and fictitious, famous and obscure
- has traditionally been situated on the margins of society, an
outsider looking in. From The Great Gatsby's Nick Carraway to the
millions of bloggers today, writers are generally seen as onlookers
documenting the human condition. Yet their own collective story has
largely gone untold. Tracing the role of the writer in the United
States over the last century, this book describes how those who use
language as a creative medium have held a special place in our
collective imagination.
Capitalizing on what is arguably the most important social
phenomenon of our time and place—the aging of America—this book
shows organizations how to market specifically to baby boomers in
their third act of life. The graying of America is undeniable, with
an estimated 10,000 boomers turning 65 every day. But to dismiss
the baby boomer generation as a group no longer worth marketing to
would be foolish. According to the Census Bureau, in 2029—the
year when the last boomer will have turned 65—there will still be
more than 61 million boomers, roughly 17 percent of the projected
population of the United States. Boomers will still be the
wealthiest generation in the United States until at least 2030,
according to the Deloitte Center for Financial Services, with their
share of net household wealth to peak at 50.2 percent by 2020.
Boomers 3.0: Marketing to Baby Boomers in Their Third Act of Life
describes how to market to baby boomers from a cultural
perspective, specifically addressing the demographic group of baby
boomers in their later adulthood—a period that will continue for
the next two to three decades. The author uses the term "3.0" to
indicate the baby boomers' third phase of life and explains how
this third act of life will differ from earlier periods;
accordingly, organizations should take a different approach to
marketing to them than in the past. This book offers a way to
contextualize business objectives within a culturally based,
forward-thinking framework that fully leverages the opportunities
presented by what is perhaps the biggest and most affluent customer
base in history. Readers will be able to use the strategies
described to map territories to stake and mine in targeting
boomers, create meaningful relationships with individuals in this
group, and communicate effectively with boomers to offer them
products and services.
Telling the full story of the American Way of Life (or more simply
the American Way) in the United States over the course of the last
century reveals key insights that add to our understanding of
American culture. Lawrence R. Samuel argues that since the term was
popularized in the 1930s, the American Way has served as the
primary guiding mythology or national ethos of the United States.
More than that, however, this work shows that the American Way has
represented many things to many people, making the mythology a
useful device for anyone wishing to promote a particular agenda
that serves his or her interests. A consumerist lifestyle supported
by a system based in free enterprise has been the ideological
backbone of the American Way, but the term has been attached to
everything from farming to baseball to barbecue. There really is no
single, identifiable American Way and never has been-it becomes
clear after tracing its history-making it a kind of Zelig of belief
systems. If our underlying philosophy or set of values is amorphous
and nebulous, then so is our national identity and character,
Samuel concludes, implying that the meaning of America is elastic
and accommodating to many interpretations. This unique thesis sets
off this work from other books and helps establish it as a seminal
resource within the fields of American history and American
studies.
American history is ubiquitous, underscoring everything from food
to travel to architecture and design. It is also emotionally
charged, frequently crossing paths with political and legal issues.
In Remembering America, Lawrence R. Samuel examines the place that
American history has occupied within education and popular culture
and how it has continually shaped and reflected our cultural values
and national identity. The story of American history, Samuel
explains, is not a straight line but rather one filled with twists
and turns and ups and downs, its narrative path as winding as that
of the United States as a whole. Organized around six distinct eras
of American history ranging from the 1920s to the present, Samuel
shows that our understanding of American history has often
generated struggle and contention as ideologically opposed groups
battled over ownership of the past. As women and minorities gained
greater power and a louder voice in the national conversation, our
perspectives on American history became significantly more
multicultural, bringing race, gender, and class issues to the
forefront. These new interpretations of our history helped to
reshape our identity on both a national and an individual level.
Samuel argues that the fight for ownership of our past, combined
with how those owners have imparted history to our youth, crucially
affects who we are. Our interpretation and expression of our
country's past reflects how that self-identity has changed over the
last one hundred years and created a strong sense of our collective
history-one of the few things Americans all have in common.
New York City 1964: A Cultural History is, as the title makes
clear, a cultural history of New York City in the year 1964. The
book focuses on five seminal events that occurred in the city that
pivotal year: (1) the ""British Invasion,"" i.e., arrival of The
Beatles in New York in February; (2) the murder of Kitty Genovese
in Queens in March; (3) the world's fair that ran in Queens between
April and October; (4) the ""race riots"" in Brooklyn and Harlem in
July; and (5) the world series in the Bronx between the New York
Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. Via an exploration of these
five events - the biggest (and to some most threatening) thing to
happen in pop culture since Elvis's appearance on The Ed Sullivan
Show, a shocking crime that reportedly went ignored, the last great
world's fair, a key, disturbing moment of the civil rights movement
and a legendary contest in sports that represented the end of an
era - readers will have a much better understanding and
appreciation of the social turbulence taking place in New York City
and the United States in the mid-1960s.
Sexidemic is the first real cultural history of sexuality in the
United States since the end of World War II. For a people who
supposedly love sex, the author argues, Americans have had no
shortage of problems with it. Since the end of World War II, in
fact, we've had a contentious relationship with sexuality, the
subject a source of considerable tension and controversy on both an
individual and societal level. Rather than being a simple pleasure
of life, something to be enjoyed, sex has served as a challenging
and disruptive force in many Americans' everyday lives for the last
two-thirds of a century. Our love affair with sex has thus been a
rocky one, filled with bumps in the road that have caused major
instability across our cultural landscape. Our individualistic,
competitive, consumerist, and anxious national character is both
reflected in and reinforced by this "sexidemic," something few have
recognized or perhaps want to admit. By charting the cultural
trajectory of sex in America since the end of World War II,
Sexidemic reveals how the nation's continual woes with sexuality
helped make us an anxious, insecure people. The sex lives of many,
perhaps most Americans have been in a perpetual state of crisis, a
constant source of concern. We've fretted over every dimension of
it, with problems in both quality and quantity. With this unhealthy
view of sexuality, it was not surprising that we felt we needed a
variety of potions and gadgets to make it happen or be pleasurable.
In tracing the cultural trajectory of sex in our society, Samuel
illustrates our bipolar approach to sexuality: low libido and sex
addiction emerged as common disorders, and sex scandal after sex
scandal has made headlines, especially over the last couple of
years. Only money has surpassed sex as a source of stress for
Americans; indeed, sex has come to be seen and treated as a
commodity. In this timely work, the author traces the role sex
plays in our society, how it shapes us and the world around us, and
how we got where we are today in our views, treatment, and practice
of sex and sexuality in our everyday lives.
This book is much more than an authoritative and compelling look at
the cultural history of the supernatural over the last century in
America-it also explains why we want to believe. The
supernatural-psychic phenomena (telepathy, clairvoyance, or ESP),
communicating with the dead, and the sighting and tracking of
ghosts-has played an integral role in American culture across the
last century. In fact, attention and interest in the supernatural
has increased, despite our society's reliance upon and enthusiasm
for science and technology. Even some top scholars, officials from
the military and police, and public figures in places as high as
the Oval Office have believed in at least some aspects of the
supernatural. Supernatural America: A Cultural History is the first
book to examine the cultural history of the supernatural in the
United States, documenting how the expansion of science and
technology coincided with a rise in supernatural/paranormal
beliefs. From the flourishing of "spiritism" in the 1920s to the
early 21st century, when the paranormal is bigger than ever, this
entertaining and educational book explains the irresistible allure
of the supernatural in America. Shares hundreds of real-life
stories, and uses hundreds of sources, many of them forgotten
Provides a bibliography of authoritative books and articles, both
in support of and arguing against beliefs in the supernatural
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