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For Future Reference

Sources from this issue, for futher reading

James Rorty, Our Master's Voice: Advertising (1938)
About as close to "classic" as "classic" gets when applied to works of advertising criticism. This 1938 critique of the industry shows that Rorty was ahead of his time. Funny, too.

Eric Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate (1978)
A concise and readable history of advertising in radio and television, including a brief section on the Advertising Council. Smart.

Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter (1984)
Inger Stole suggests chapter one as an excellent treatment of the War Advertising Council's woman power campaign.

Jane Healy, Endangered Minds (1990) and Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds and What We Can Do About It (1998). Endangered Minds is the more interesting of the two, although a bit dated now. It is among the few books addressed to a lay audience that looks seriously at media's influence on children's development: effect on language skills, attention span, and physical movement. Healy has a tendency to "biologize" complex issues and often seems to equate humans with "brains." Yet despite these weaknesses, she broaches serious questions in a smart, accessible way. Most of the material in Failure to Connect was too obvious and familiar to draw me in (the major points are summarized in a good article-Todd Oppenheimer's "The Computer Delusion," Atlantic Monthly, July 1997).

Learning in the Real World
An organization "dedicated to a rational examination of the costs and benefits of education technology." The website has several critical articles on computers and learning.

History Matters
Superb portal for American history resources on the web: primary documents, images, video, you name it. Designed for high school and college history teachers, but recommended.

American Memory, from the Library of Congress
More than 5 million items from more than 90 historical collections. Jaw-dropping. I found this via History Matters.

Michael Barson and Steven Heller, Red Scared! The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture (2001)
Nice sampling of posters, book covers and other images of red hysteria. The collection has the unfortunate effect of turning red-baiting into camp fodder (the text is rather tangential), but-hey-the pictures are cool.

Consumers Research and Consumers Union history
Ad Access

Images for over 7,000 U.S. advertisements, mostly from 1911 to 1955. The best archives of old advertisements on the web. Adflip.com, which focuses on a later period (1940-present), is also quite good.

Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised (1979)
An intense study of history textbooks that raised many of the points Loewen made later. Fitzgerald's book is less reader-friendly and more ambitious intellectually than Loewen's. It's great, but with neither an index or bibliography, a bit frustrating as well.

James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995) and Lies Across America (1999).
The first book, which examines history textbooks, is highly recommended. The followup, which looks at historical monuments, has some interesting points, but is more anecdotal.

Bessie Pierce, Civic Attitudes in American School Textbooks (1930) and Public Opinion and the Teaching of History in the United States (1970)
My friend Rick swears by Pierce's books (and calls Loewen a lightweight in comparison). I'll have to take his word for it, though, because the library doesn't have these.

Daniel Boorstin, America: The Democratic Experience (1973).
Although he's a bit of a conservative crank, Boorstin's books are among my favorites on American history. He has a uncanny knack for sifting out the interesting points of any subject.