The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life (The History of Communication)

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Critique
Review: This is no mere academic exercise despite its having been published by a university press. "The Consumer Trap" does for understanding contemporary commercial culture what Manufacturing Consent did for modern media studies. It is one of the most important and persuasive books I have ever read, and I compare it to the best of C. Wright Mills - which it resembles. Not since Veblen has a literate analyst taken on what capitalism has been doing to American life, gloves off, like Michael Dawson does. The statistics he cites about the staggering amounts being spent by business to keep the madness of our time-deprived and consumption-obsessed way of life going are worth the price of the book. Fans (like me) of Jacoby's "The Last Intellectuals" will keenly note that Dawson, albeit a Ph.D. in sociology, is making his living as a paralegal - and hence is free from the toady disciplinary and departmental politics that would have aborted this brilliant book. Tell your friends - and get together to discuss this book while we still have a remaining few shreds of social fabric which have not been turned into rubbish.