- Paperback: 322 pages
- Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (Dec 1 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0226260127
- ISBN-13: 978-0226260129
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 454 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#192,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #59 in Books > Business & Investing > Reference > Shopping & Commerce
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In his book-length essay The Conquest of Cool, Thomas Frank explores the ways in which Madison Avenue co-opted the language of youthful '60s rebellion. It is "the story," Frank writes, "of the bohemian cultural style's trajectory from adversarial to hegemonic; the story of hip's mutation from native language of the alienated to that of advertising." This appropriation had wide-ranging consequences that deeply transformed our culture--consequences that linger in the form of '90s "hip consumerism." (Think of Nike using the song "Revolution" to sell sneakers, or Coca-Cola using replicas of Ken Kesey's bus to peddle Fruitopia.)
This is no simplistic analysis of how the counterculture "sold out" to big business. Instead, Frank shows how the counterculture and business culture influenced one another. In fact, he writes, the counterculture's critique of mass society mimicked earlier developments in business itself, when a new generation of executives attacked the stultified, hierarchical nature of corporate life. Counterculture and business culture evolved together over time--until the present day, when they have become essentially the same thing. According to Frank, the '60s live on in the near-archetypal dichotomy of "hip" and "square," now part of advertising vernacular, signifying a choice between consumer styles. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
...provides an invaluable argument for anyone who has ever scoffed at hand-me-down counterculture from the '60s... a spirited and exhaustive analysis of that era's advertising... -- Wired, Brad Wieners
For a renovated dissertation, The Conquest of Cool is blessedly free of academic throat-clearing and professional jargon. There isn't a dull page in the book. Unfortunately, Frank's frequent generalizations about "the world of business and of middle-class mores" are far less convincing than the particular stories he has to tell. The advertising and fashion industries, after all, are not representative of "postwar American capitalism." If there were any businessmen who didn't welcome youth culture, they don't appear here. -- Slate, Alexander Star --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
For a renovated dissertation, The Conquest of Cool is blessedly free of academic throat-clearing and professional jargon. There isn't a dull page in the book. Unfortunately, Frank's frequent generalizations about "the world of business and of middle-class mores" are far less convincing than the particular stories he has to tell. The advertising and fashion industries, after all, are not representative of "postwar American capitalism." If there were any businessmen who didn't welcome youth culture, they don't appear here. -- Slate, Alexander Star --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
For as long as America is torn by culture wars, the 1960s will remain the historical terrain of conflict. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
For as long as America is torn by culture wars, the 1960s will remain the historical terrain of conflict. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Zach Robbins, honestly...,
By V "here" (there) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Paperback)
Thomas Frank's work in this book is extremely in depth, his knowledge of the marketing revolution of the 60's is probably the most exhaustive you will find, and this book is definitely worth reading. There are definitely problems with his writing and his ability to take the reader above the mundane details and obvious deductions of his work. However, the type of person willing to read this book is probably looking for pure information and not counting on any sort of entertaining odyssey, and that's good because it isn't very entertaining. The thesis is proved, and proved over again, and over again again. The same things are repeated over and over with different titles and contexts until one starts to wonder whether this book was really worth maxing out at 250 some odd pages. But such is the nature of information.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book,
By
This review is from: The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Paperback)
An excellent examination of consumer culture and the way that corporate America has tried to deal with, understand, and co-opt youth culture (or did youth culture co-opt advertising?) Frank gets to the bottom of it all in an always entertaining look at advertising from the Madison Avenue years through the sixties. His examinations of various ad campaigns - such as Volvo who insisted in their ads that their cars were ugly and at least not as filled with defects as the cars they used to make - are insightful and well researched. In fact, this book is a necessary primer for anyone doing research on youth culture. It helped to change the way that I think about these issues and has become a text that I refer to often.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great history of advertising...,
This review is from: The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Paperback)
This was Tom Frank (founding editor of the Baffler, for those in the know) University of Chicago dissertation on advertising, and is absolutely fascinating. Frank's main focus is a Frankfurt School/classical Marxist critique of how the early 60s anti-advertising of people like Bill Bernbach (the guy responsible for the classic early VW beetle ads) worked to help create our ideas of 60s counterculture. As such, it's of interest to anybody fascinated by cultural theory, 20th c. American history, or corporate cultures and advertising. However, it's also useful to anybody involved in marketing, planning or advertising (even if your political views aren't of the college Marxist with capitalist parents school), simply because it's just a great history of advertising in the 20th century, and shifting attitudes towards advertising as a profession, from the idea that advertising was a hard science (propounded by David Ogilvy and others) to the idea that advertising was "an art." Most importantly, it's a fantastic read-Tom Frank is a great writer with a fantastic turn-of-phrase, and is better thinker than 90% of academics in the humanities today.
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