Some Wore Bobby Sox : The Emergence of Teenage Girls' Culture, 1920-1945 (Girls' History and Culture) (June 26, 2004)
Kelly Schrum
Images of teenage girls in poodle skirts dominated American popular culture on the 1950's. But as Kelly Schrum shows, teenage girls were swooning over pop idols and using their allowances to buy the latest fashions well beforehand. After World War I, a teenage identity arose in the US, as well as a consumer culture geared toward it. From fashion and beauty to music and movies, high school girls both consumed and influenced what manufacturers, marketers, and retailers offered to them. Examining both national trends and individual lives, Schrum looks at the relationship between the power of consumer culture and the ability of girls to selectively accept, reject, and appropriate consumer goods. Lavishly illustrated with images from advertisements, catalogs, and high school year books, Some Wore Bobby Sox is a unique and fascinating cultural history of teenage girl culture in the middle of the century.

Nothing in Itself: Complexions of Fashion (Theories of Contemporary Culture) Blau Herbert, Herbert Blau, Herbert Blau
Beyond the theatricality of fashion, or its commerce, are other seductive issues that come with dress in its fascination-effect, including the validities, vanities, and deceits of appearance. No more than appearance, "nothing in itself," that fashion has substance, complex and elusive substance, is the thematic of this book, putting another complexion on the subject, the look, and the look that incites the look, in high style, street style, classical elegance or fetishistic chic, from farthingale and corset to power suits and grunge.

Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations, and Analysis
Stella Bruzzi (Editor), Pamela Church Gibson (Editor)
From the catwalk to the shopping mall, from the big screen to the art museum, fashion plays an increasingly central role in contemporary culture. Fashion Cultures investigates why we are so fascinated by fashion and the associated spheres of photography, magazines and television, and shopping.
Stella Bruzzi is Senior Lecturer in Media Arts at Royal Holloway College.

A Matter of Taste : How Names, Fashions, and Culture Change   Stanley Lieberson
Social scientists have long been interested in the question of how notions of taste and fashion change over time. Do aesthetic judgments reflect external forces such as state policies, class stratification, or commercial advertising, or are these judgments informed by largely subjective factors that are difficult to pin down in scientific terms? Lieberson (sociology, Harvard) has written a subtle and technically sophisticated analysis of changes in taste by examining the cultural patterns influencing the first names given to children in the past two centuries. As Lieberson notes, "compared with fashions in clothing, cars, and sodas, the naming process can be studied without worrying about the effect of organizations dedicated to influencing these tastes." While he acknowledges the impact of external forces on name selection (the emergence of popular movie stars, for example), he emphasizes the importance of "internal taste mechanisms" that shape fashion "even when external conditions are fixed." This carefully reasoned study should be of interest to sociologists, historians, and students of cultural studies. Recommended for academic libraries.DKent Worcester, Marymount Manhattan Coll., New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Stanley Lieberson is Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.

In the Culture Society: Art, Fashion and Popular Music
Angela McRobbie
We may be living in a material world, but Angela McRobbie pinpoints a "new materialism" in In the Culture Society. She provides a lively, incisive look at how different artistic and cultural practices develop in contemporary consumer culture, by examining the new populism of young artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin and the proliferation of underground forms of dance music. McRobbie explores how musicians such as Tricky, Talvin Singh, and Goldie have incorporated Black and Asian social history into a distinctive sound. She also investigates the relationship between cultural production and feminism through the new sexualities of teen girls' magazines.
Angela McRobbie is Professor of Communication at Goldsmiths College.

Buzz: Harness the Power of Influence and Create Demand (April 18, 2003)
Marian Salzman, Ira Matathia, Ann O'Reilly
"Marian Salzman has a knack for telling you what you'll be doing before you know it yourself." (The Observer, 29 June 2003)
"...an enjoyable read, liberarally peppered with illuminating and insightful case studies..." (Marketing, 3 July 2003)
“ …well covered…”(Gulf Business, July 2003)
“…brand owners must get their wares talked about. The question is: how? The authors of Buzz... believe they have an answer…”(Financial Times, 24 July 2003)

Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
Christopher Lasch
Fantastic reading !, April 23, 2005
Reviewer: Richard Skaff "Rick S" (Rancho Palos verdes, Ca United States)
Christopher lasch has touched a very sensistive social nerve in his book "The Culture Of Narcissism." He gives the reader the awareness of living in a society that has become increasingly self-absorbed, out of touch with its past and future, and totally focused on the moment where everyone is seeking decadence and immediate self-gratification. I strongly believe that the narcissism in our culture is the direct result of the combination of consumerism and individualism that are both advocated for by the corporate elite and the politicians. The end result is profits !!! Mr. Lasch's book is a powerful and accurate portrayal of an ailing society heading toward disaster....
I would highly recommend this book for every American that is interested in comprehending himself and his society. It will surely provide the reader with an educational experience and an electrifying reading!

He created a concept , March 1, 2005
Reviewer: S. Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel)
In this book Lasch defines a cultural reality and reveals a concept the Western world is living with, and to a degree suffering from today ' cultural narcissism'. Lasch saw that the whole culture built around ' self - centeredness' is less than healthy. He saw that the focusing of ' the me generation'on themselves led to a more fragile and broken America. Those willing to put themselves first and nothing else second were the same people who broke marriages easily, readily used friends and discarded them.
Individualism carried to extreme and self- indulgence upon which no limit is placed are the heart of the culture of narcissim that we are in some sense still living with today.

More cultural elitism...., September 6, 2003
Reviewer: Hulka (Washington DC)
Dismissing this book because it is 'Freudian' is not an argument to dismiss it's thesis. It's an entire other argument, and not really valid, except among the academic elite, who along with the urban cosmopolitian elite are "part of the problem, not part of the solution' to paraphrase that old 60's slogan.
Read this book. It really has insights into the origins of the continuing culture war that divides the urban coastal elite from the mainstream of America. It does a lot to explain the origins of the "Red" versus the "Blue" divide in the Election 2000.

Abusing Narcissism, January 11, 2001
Reviewer: Sam Vaknin "author of books about narcissistic abuse" (Skopje, Macedonia)
'The Culture of Narcissism - American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations' was published in the first year of the unhappy presidency of Jimmy Carter (1979). The latter endorsed the book publicly (in his famous 'national malaise' speech). The main thesis of the book is that the Americans have created a self-absorbed (though not self aware), greedy and frivolous society which depended on consumerism, demographic studies, opinion polls and Government to know and to define itself. What is the solution? Lasch proposed a 'return to basics': self-reliance, the family, nature, the community, and the Protestant work ethic. To those who adhere, he promised an elimination of their feelings of alienation and despair. There is no single Lasch. This chronicler of culture, did so mainly by chronicling his inner turmoil, conflicting ideas and ideologies, emotional upheavals, and intellectual vicissitudes. In this sense, of (courageous) self-documentation, Mr. Lasch epitomized Narcissism, was the quintessential Narcissist, the better positioned to criticize the phenomenon. Some 'scientific' disciplines (e.g., the history of culture and History in general) are closer to art than to the rigorous (a.k.a. 'exact' or 'natural' or 'physical' sciences). Lasch borrowed heavily from other, more established branches of knowledge without paying tribute to the original, strict meaning of concepts and terms. Such was the use that he made of 'Narcissism'. Lasch's greatest error was that he did not acknowledge that there is an abyss between narcissism and self love, being interested in oneself and being obsessively preoccupied with oneself. Lasch confuses the two. The price of progress is growing self-awareness and with it growing pains and the pains of growing up. It is not a loss of meaning and hope - it is just that pain has a tendency to push everything to the background. Those are constructive pains, signs of adjustment and adaptation, of evolution. America has no inflated, megalomaniac, grandiose ego. It never built an overseas empire, it is made of dozens of ethnic immigrant groups, it strives to learn, to emulate. Americans do not lack empathy - they are the foremost nation of volunteers and also professes the biggest number of (tax deductible) donation makers. Americans are not exploitative - they are hard workers, fair players, Adam Smith-ian egoists. They believe in Live and Let Live. They are individualists and they believe that the individual is the source of all authority and the universal yardstick and benchmark. This is a positive philosophy. Granted, it led to inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth. But then other ideologies had much worse outcomes. Luckily, they were defeated by the human spirit, the best manifestation of which is still democratic capitalism. Sam Vaknin, author of 'Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited'.

Interesting, May 13, 2000
Reviewer: smahadin@hotmail.com (Jordan) - See all my reviews
It is true that Lasch relied a lot on psychoanalysis in his intellectual barrage against the American culture, but his point of view is certianly worth considering. To start with, the book makes an attempt to be comprehensive which is not crime except that many of the issues he touched upon would require further elaboration within a much broader theoritical framework. He borrows extensively from Freud, criticises Fromm and squeezes Horeny in, thus sacrificing many other branches of social sciences to place psychoanalysis at the forefront. It is not a great book and one should not be lured by the big words, but it does have its interesting moments.

Despite its Freudian defects, this book is brilliant., July 2, 1999
Reviewer: A reader
Some critics called this book overheated, but I do not believe that Lasch's style was faulty. His arguments ring true and are very persuasive. His insights into American culture are impressive, and he demonstrated sound knowledge of all the social sciences. The book is extremely well-written, never redundant, and always entertaining. This is a definitive indictment of American society, and is still valid twenty years later.

Fashion, Culture, and Identity
Fred Davis
Davis (emeritus professor of sociology, Univ. of California-San Diego) discusses several intriguing theories about fashion's social and psychological significance in modern culture. What makes clothes fashion; how fashions evolve; how fashion choices express social status, gender identity, sexuality, and conformity; and how fashion is (or is not) accepted are all discussed, Davis having reviewed over 200 sources of writings by social scientists and fashion students. Especially good is the chapter on the dynamics of certain groups' intentional resistance to fashion. Davis does propose a few of his own ideas, always backed up by the literature. The work would have been enlivened by increased emphasis on Davis's actual interviews with designers, editors, and manufacturers, whose opinions are only briefly summarized. This book is a good basis for further reading, but lay readers will need handy access to an unabridged dictionary to cope with the scholarly language. For academic and specialized collections.
- Therese D. Baker, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
What do our clothes say about who we are or who we think we are? How does the way we dress communicate messages about our identity? Is the desire to be "in fashion" universal, or is it unique to Western culture? How do fashions change? These are just a few of the intriguing questions Fred Davis sets out to answer in this provocative look at what we do with our clothes--and what they can do to us.
Much of what we assume to be individual preference, Davis shows, really reflects deeper social and cultural forces. Ours is an ambivalent social world, characterized by tensions over gender roles, social status, and the expression of sexuality. Predicting what people will wear becomes a risky gamble when the link between private self and public persona can be so unstable.

Social Communication in Advertising: Persons, Products and Images of Well-Being
William Leiss, Stephen Kline, Sut Jhally
Now available in a significantly updated second edition featuring two new chapters, Social Communication in Advertising remains the most comprehensive historical study of advertising and its function within contemporary society. It traces advertising's influence within three key social domains: the new commodities industry; popular culture; and the mass media which manages the constellation of images that unifies all three.

Consumers and Luxury : Consumer Culture in Europe 1650-1850
Maxine Berg (Editor), Helen Clifford (Editor)
From tulips to jewels, gastronomy to silver, coffee to colors, the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth century saw an explosion of consumer and luxury objects and a growing demand for their consumption by a widening section of the population. This highly entertaining and interdisciplinary volume brings together an outstanding group of scholars to chart the rise of consumer culture in Europe during this period. The volume includes essays on France and Holland, but the focus is primarily on Britain.

Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender, and Culture in Modern America (Hagley Perspectives on Business and Culture)
Philip Scranton (Editor)
"Until recently, business historians have not yielded to beauty - at least as a subject of scholarly inquiry. But beauty is big business." - Kathy Peiss, from the Introduction
Beauty seems simple; we know it when we see it. But of course our ideas about what is attractive are influenced by a broad range of social and economic factors, and in Beauty and Business leading historians set out to provide this important cultural context. How have retailers shaped popular consciousness about beauty? And how, in turn, have cultural assumptions influenced the commodification of beauty? The contributors here look to particular examples in order to address these questions, turning their attention to topics ranging from the social role of the African American hair salon, the sexual dynamics of bathing suits and shirtcollars, and the deeper meanings of corsets, to what the Avon lady tells us about changing American values. As a whole, these essays force us to reckon with the ways that beauty has been made, bought, and sold in modern America.