20th century
A01=Gary S. Cross
A01=Robert N. Proctor
addiction
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Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Gary S. Cross
Author_Robert N. Proctor
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candy bar
capitalism
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JBCC2
Category=JBFS
Category=JFCD
Category=JFFT
civilization
commercial
commercialism
consumer culture
consumerism
consumption
contemporary
COP=United States
cultural
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Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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film
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Language_English
marketing
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modern
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Price_€20 to €50
products
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psychology
sensation
sensual
social studies
sociology
softlaunch
sugar
superfood
sweet tooth
technology
Product details
- ISBN 9780226121277
- Weight: 595g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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From the candy bar to the cigarette, records to roller coasters, a technological revolution during the last quarter of the nineteenth century precipitated a colossal shift in human consumption and sensual experience. Food, drink, and many other consumer goods came to be mass-produced, bottled, canned, condensed, and distilled, unleashing new and intensified surges of pleasure, delight, thrill - and addictions. In Packaged Pleasures, Gary S. Cross and Robert N. Proctor delve into an unchartered chapter of American history, shedding new light on the origins of modern consumer culture and how technologies have transformed human sensory experience. In the space of only a few decades, junk foods, cigarettes, movies, recorded sound, and thrill rides brought about a revolution in what it means to taste, smell, see, hear, and touch. New techniques of boxing, labeling, and tubing gave consumers virtually unlimited access to pleasures they could simply unwrap and enjoy. Manufacturers generated a seemingly endless stream of sugar-filled, high-fat foods that were delicious but detrimental to health. Mechanically rolled cigarettes entered the market and quickly addicted millions.
And many other packaged pleasures dulled or displaced natural and social delights. Yet many of these same new technologies also offered convenient and effective medicines, unprecedented opportunities to enjoy music and the visual arts, and more hygienic, varied, and nutritious food and drink. For better or for worse, sensation became mechanized, commercialized, and, to a large extent, democratized by being made cheap and accessible. Cross and Proctor have delivered an ingeniously constructed history of consumerism and consumer technology that will make us all rethink some of our favorite things.
Gary S. Cross is distinguished professor of modern history at Pennsylvania State University and the author of many books, including An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America and The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century. Robert N. Proctor is professor of history of science at Stanford University and the author of many books, including Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis and Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge.
