Download or read book A Consumers Republic written by Lizabeth Cohen and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book.

Download or read book Beyond Suffrage Women in the New Deal written by Susan Ware and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles women who achieved positions of national leadership in the 1930s under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration.

Download or read book The Politics of Consumption written by Martin Daunton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2001-06-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Objects and commodities have frequently been studied to assess their position within consumer - or material - culture, but all too rarely have scholars examined the politics that lie behind that culture. This book fills the gap and explores the political and state structures that have shaped the consumer and the nature of his or her consumption. From medieval sumptuary laws to recent debates in governments about consumer protection, consumption has always been seen as a highly political act that must be regulated, directed or organized according to the political agendas of various groups. An internationally renowned group of experts looks at the emergence of the rational consuming individual in modern economic thought, the moral and ideological values consumers have attached to their relationships with commodities, and how the practices and theories of consumer citizenship have developed alongside and within the expanding state. How does consumer identity become available to people and how do they use it? How is consumption negotiated in a dictatorship? Are material politics about state politics, consumer politics, or the relationship between these and consumer practices?From the specifics of the politics of consumption in the French Revolution - what was the status of rum? How complicated did a vinegar recipe have to be before the resultant product qualified as 'luxury'? - to the highly contentious twentieth-century debates over American political economy, this original book traces the relationships among political cultures, consumers and citizenship from the eighteenth century to the present.

Download or read book State and Party in America s New Deal written by Kenneth Finegold and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historically grounded and theoretically informed analysis of two major governmental interventions into the US economy--the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Working back and forth between theories of politics in advanced capitalist democracies and the two concrete historical trajectories, the authors' argument is that the origins, implementation, and consequences of the NRA and AAA are best explained with a historical institutionalist, state- and party-centered approach. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book States of Dependency written by Karen M. Tani and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book recounts the transformation of American poor relief in the decades spanning the New Deal and the War on Poverty.

Download or read book Benjamin V Cohen written by William Lasser and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A key figure in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, Benjamin V. Cohen (1894–1983) was a major architect of public policy from the first days of FDR’s presidency through the early days of the Cold War. Although he kept a low public profile, Cohen’s influence extended across a wide range of domestic and foreign policy initiatives. In this biography, William Lasser offers the first account of Ben Cohen’s life and career, and an assessment of his contribution to the origin and development of modern American liberalism. Cohen’s life provides an extraordinary lens through which to view the development of the evolving political philosophy of the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies. A brilliant lawyer noted for his good judgment and experience, Cohen was a leading member of FDR’s “Brain Trust,” developing ideas, drafting legislation, lobbying within the administration and in Congress, and defending the New Deal in court. The book traces his contributions to domestic financial policy, his activities during the war years in London and Washington, his service as counselor to the State Department and member of the American delegation to the United Nations after the war, and his role in the American Zionist movement. From Cohen’s life and work, Lasser draws important insights into the development of the New Deal and the evolution of postwar liberalism.

Download or read book To Establish a Consumer Protection Agency written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations. Legislation and Military Operations Subcommittee and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly written by Ellis W. Hawley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The massive depression of the 1930's detonated the crisis between harsh reality and the vision of material abundance and economic security created by the American industrial order. Amid widespread poverty there was increasing concentration of economic power and loss of individual initiative. Professor Hawley traces the pattern of this conflict. He analyzes the National Recovery Administration, the sources and nature of the antitrust ideology, the rise of Keynesianism, the confusion within the Roosevelt Administration during the recession of 1937-38, and the government career of Thurman Arnold. Attention is given to the administrators of the New Deal and to the beliefs, pressures, and symbols that affected their policy decisions. How and why these ideas and pressures produced policies that were economically inconsistent yet politically workable is also explained. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book To Establish a Consumer Protection Agency written by United States. Congress. House. Government Operations and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Getting and Spending written by Susan Strasser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-11-13 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The developing history of consumption is not so much a separate field, as a prism through which many aspects of social and political life may be viewed. The essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches in Europe and America; yet their commonalities suggest recent directions in the scholarship, raising such themes as consumption and democracy, the development of a global economy, the role of the state, the centrality of consumption to Cold War politics, the importance of the Second World War as a historical divide, the language of consumption, the contexts of locality, race, ethnicity, gender, and class, and the environmental consequences of twentieth-century consumer society. Implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, they explore the role of the historian as social, political, and moral critic. The essays discuss products, corporate strategies, government policies, and ideas about consumption. Unlike other studies of twentieth-century consumption, this book provides international comparisons.

Download or read book The Coming of the New Deal 1933 1935 written by Arthur Meier Schlesinger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003 with total page 692 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portraying the United States from the Great War to the Great Depression, The Crisis of the Old Order covers the Jazz Age and the rise and fall of the cult of business. For a season, prosperity seemed permanent, but the illusion came to an end when Wall Street crashed in October 1929. Public trust in the wisdom of business leadership crashed too. With a dramatist's eye for vivid detail and a scholar's respect for accuracy, Schlesinger brings to life the era that gave rise to FDR and his New Deal and changed the public face of the United States forever.

Download or read book Corruption and Reform written by Edward L. Glaeser and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite recent corporate scandals, the United States is among the world’s least corrupt nations. But in the nineteenth century, the degree of fraud and corruption in America approached that of today’s most corrupt developing nations, as municipal governments and robber barons alike found new ways to steal from taxpayers and swindle investors. In Corruption and Reform, contributors explore this shadowy period of United States history in search of better methods to fight corruption worldwide today. Contributors to this volume address the measurement and consequences of fraud and corruption and the forces that ultimately led to their decline within the United States. They show that various approaches to reducing corruption have met with success, such as deregulation, particularly “free banking,” in the 1830s. In the 1930s, corruption was kept in check when new federal bureaucracies replaced local administrations in doling out relief. Another deterrent to corruption was the independent press, which kept a watchful eye over government and business. These and other facets of American history analyzed in this volume make it indispensable as background for anyone interested in corruption today.

Download or read book The Coming of the New Deal written by Arthur M. Schlesinger and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003-07-09 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume two of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s Age of Roosevelt series describes Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first tumultuous years in the White House. Coming into office at the bottom of the Great Depression, FDR told the American people that they have nothing to fear but fear itself. The conventional wisdom having failed, he tried unorthodox remedies to avert economic collapse. His first hundred days restored national morale, and his New Dealers filled Washington with new approaches to recovery and reform. Combining idealistic ends with realistic means, Roosevelt proposed to humanize, redeem, and rescue capitalism. The Coming of the New Deal, written with Schlesinger’s customary verve, is a gripping account of critical years in the history of the republic. “Monumental…authoritative…spirited…one of the major works in American historical literature.”—New York Times “Impelling, an achievement as much in its sensitivity as in its scholarship…It is essential reading.”—Kirkus Reviews

Download or read book Sold American written by Charles F. McGovern and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the twentieth century, an emerging consumer culture in the United States promoted constant spending to meet material needs and develop social identity and self-cultivation. In Sold American, Charles F. McGovern examines the key players active in shaping this cultural evolution: advertisers and consumer advocates. McGovern argues that even though these two professional groups invented radically different models for proper spending, both groups propagated mass consumption as a specifically American social practice and an important element of nationality and citizenship. Advertisers, McGovern shows, used nationalist ideals, icons, and political language to define consumption as the foundation of the pursuit of happiness. Consumer advocates, on the other hand, viewed the market with a republican-inspired skepticism and fought commercial incursions on consumer independence. The result, says McGovern, was a redefinition of the citizen as consumer. The articulation of an "American Way of Life" in the Depression and World War II ratified consumer abundance as the basis of a distinct American culture and history.

Download or read book Advertising on Trial written by Inger L. Stole and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1930s, the United States almost regulated advertising to a degree that seems unthinkable today. Activists viewed modern advertising as propaganda that undermined the ability of consumers to live in a healthy civic environment. Organized consumer movements fought the emerging ad business and its practices with fierce political opposition. Inger L. Stole examines how consumer activists sought to limit corporate influence by rallying popular support to moderate and change advertising. Stole weaves the story through the extensive use of primary sources, including archival research done with consumer and trade group records, as well as trade journals and engagement with the existing literature. Her account of the struggle also demonstrates how public relations developed in order to justify laissez-faire corporate advertising in light of a growing consumer rights movement, and how the failure to rein in advertising was significant not just for civic life in the 1930s but for our era as well.

Download or read book The Expert Consumer written by Alain Chatriot and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent work has focused on the politics of consumption and its manifestation in a number of situations. This volume extends these debates, providing a tighter focus and contributing to a noticeable gap in the field that numerous scholars are beginning to turn towards: that is, organizations of consumers themselves who have chosen to speak for all consumers and similar such bodies of experts which act on behalf of consumers. The volume is fortunate in drawing upon a number of scholars who are about to publish major works on the subject, but who are happy to provide summary versions of their work for the volume. The book pays particular attention to specific moments in consumer mobilization and expertise, capturing the range of types of expert consumers across the twentieth century, from ethical consumer groups at the beginning, to intellectuals, housewives, economists and public officials. It addresses questions on the nature of consumer organizing, which bodies can speak for consumers, whether one consumer voice can ever be identified and the relationship between consumption and citizenship. Overview pieces demonstrate the larger narratives involved in the study of the expert consumer, whilst more comparative essays set out the nature of transatlantic exchanges. Other contributions point to the similarities across seemingly different consumption regimes, while case studies of specific organisations and key historical moments draw out the particularities of consumer expertise.

Download or read book The Democratic Wish written by James A. Morone and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This prize-winning book reinterprets more than 200 years of American political history as the interplay between the public’s dread of government power and its yearning for communal democracy. James Morone argues that Americans will never solve their collective problems as long as they instinctively fear all public power as a threat to liberty. This revised edition includes a new final chapter about contemporary populism, government bashing, and democratic wishes.Winner of the 1991 Gladys M. Kammerer Award“The Democratic Wish merits the highest compliments one can accord a public policy book. It spotlights a problem that can no longer be evaded. And it makes you think.”-Alan Tonelson, New York Times Book Review“Morone writes with flair and passion. The fact that he puts forth a provocative argument and provides concise histories of labor, civil rights, and health care politics makes this book especially useful for teaching American politics.”-R. Shep Melnick, Journal of Interdisciplinary History“Morone’s contribution to our understanding of state building . . . is substantial and profound.”-John S. Dryzek, American Political Science Review“This stimulating reinterpretation of American political history will interest both scholars concerned about the past and citizens concerned about the future.”-Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.“This is a persuasive, illuminating study in American political ideas and the disappointments of reform.”-Dean McSweeney, American Politics Review.