 | The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 19391979 Subjects: Consumption (Economics) -- United States -- Psychological aspects; Consumption (Economics) -- Moral and ethical aspects -- United States; Intellectuals -- United States -- Attitudes; Acquisitiveness -- Moral and ethical aspects; Affluent consumers -- Unit; This book charts the reactions of prominent American writers to the unprecedented prosperity of the decades following World War II. It begins with an examination of Lewis Mumford's wartime call for "democratic" consumption and concludes with an analysis of the origins of President Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech of 1979. Between these bookends, Daniel Horowitz documents a broad range of competing views, each in its own way reflective of a deep-seated ambivalence toward consumer culture. Daniel Horowitz is Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of American Studies at Smith College and author of Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism. |
