The Anxieties of Affluence by Daniel Horowitz

The Anxieties of Affluence by Daniel Horowitz

This work 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 Jimmy Carter's malaise speech of 1979. It documents a broad range of competing views, each in its own way reflective of a deep-seated ambivalence toward consumer culture - a persistent but shifting tension between a commitment to self-restraint and the pursuit of personal satisfaction through the acquisition of commercial goods and experiences. To explain why affluence has caused so much anxiety in America, the text focuses on key works of cultural criticism that stimulated public debate during what many have called the golden age of modern American capitalism. It examines the writings of three leading intellectuals - Daniel Bell, Robert N. Bellah, and Christopher Lasch - whose views shaped President Carter's response to the energy crisis of the 1970s

A wonderful contribution to the field of recent American intellectual historyHorowitz deftly elucidates some of the most important works of the mid-twentieth century concerned with consumer abundance and its moral and political significance. The writing is always accessible, and the whole work offers a crystal clear overview and analysis of the meanings 'affluence' had in a crucial period of the past century. - Howard Brick, author of Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s; An impressive and important book.... In a field that is sometimes flooded with abstractions, Horowitz's approach - which focuses on specific people, debates, and texts - is welcome. There has been surprisingly little scholarship on post-World War II American consumer society, and this book certainly is the most thorough that I know of. - Lawrence B. Glickman, author of A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society

Daniel Horowitz is the Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of American Studies emeritus at Smith College. He graduated from Yale in 1960, magna cum laude in American studies, and later earned a doctorate in history at Harvard. From 1966 until he retired from teaching in 2012, he taught American studies and U.S. history, mostly at women's colleges, often with his wife, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, who holds a PhD in the History of American Civilization from Harvard.Horowitz's work has focused on the history of consumer culture and social criticism in the United States during the twentieth century. Among his publications are The Morality of Spending: Attitudes toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875-1940 (1985); Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (1998); The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939-1979 (2004), winner of the Eugene M. Kayden Prize for the best book published in the humanities in 2004 by a university press; and Consuming Pleasures: Intellectuals and Popular Culture in the Postwar World (2012).He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Humanities Center; the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College, Harvard; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2003 the American Studies Association awarded him its Mary C. Turpie Prize for outstanding abilities and achievement in American Studies teaching, advising, and program development at the local or regional level.Dan and Helen live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Sarah, is an associate professor of history at Washington and Lee University. Their son, Ben, is a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9781558494329
ISBN 10	1558494324
Titel	The Anxieties of Affluence
Autor	Daniel Horowitz
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	University of Massachusetts Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2004-02-01
Seitenanzahl	352
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
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