Bibliography of an Idea

Coming in 2006: Soon we will update the book reviews for the first time since — gulp — 1999.
Scroll down to the end of the page to see a list of soon-to-be-reviewed titles:

Selling 'em By the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food, David Gerard Hogan, 1997, University Press

Simply amazing.

My friend Tricia gave this to me for my birthday and, of course, I was ecstatic. This book is a lot more than I bargained for. For years I have viewed the hamburger as an icon of America. Its image and discussion has found its way into many a Culture Freak articles.

This view is even more appropriate than I had thought, according to Hogan, who argues that, starting in the 1920s, the White Castle hamburger chain single-handedly invented the notion of a national American food.

Prior to this period, American cuisine was divided in two. The upper and rising middle classes dined on a fare that wasn't all that different than their British and European counterparts. Immigrants, which by the late 19th century, was the largest population of American poor, also tended to eat the foods that they'd eaten in the old country. Ne'er did the two really meet. Hamburger meat was looked upon by the wealthy as lowbrow — something for those who couldn't afford steak or mutton.

White Castle changed all this. The chain popularized the hamburger to all classes, and for the first time on a large scale, American laborers and their overseers began to dine side by side at the Castle counters. 

The history of White Castle is extensive and surprisingly interesting. The company invented both the concept of fast food and takeout, paving the way for the explosion of fast food restaurants in the 1950s. (The McExplosion was largely the result of the rise of car culture in America).

We learn how the chain survived such perils as the meat rationing of World War II, the astronomical number of rip-off restaurants (White Palace, White Tower, Royal Castle, and White Clock represent only about 25 percent), and the rise of mega-marketer McDonald's. White Castle's survival of this last crunch resides in its corporate culture, and in a core cult following that refuse to do without their "sliders."

Okay, I admit it. I have never read the entire contents of this highly academic text, despite the fact that it was assigned to me in college. Still, I keep it around for reference, as Kuhn's presentation of the history of scientific revolution, and the theories he derives provides a wonderful model for the evolution of worldviews and ideologies in general. 

Kuhn's writings present the reader with the inherent subjectivity of what we often classify as "knowledge." That, while each generation of scientific may render those from the past as false or incomplete, history shows that the "scientific facts" believed today are no less subject to future upheaval. 

In the 20th Century, the scientist has been viewed by western society in much the same way that religious leaders had been in the past. The scientist, like the priest, or the village shaman, is the person who explains to the rest of the people how the world works. And, like most religious figures, scientists tend to believe that they know what the world is like. Today's scientist may believe he or she has "found the answer" to a long asked question, or may "discover" something that disproves a centuries old scientific belief. This scientist may believe he or she is right, and that their predecessors were wrong. But, that is exactly how the predecessor thought. Everyone once knew that the world was flat, and later, that the earth was spherical and that all other heavenly bodies revolved around it. Today we know that the earth is round and that it is one of many bodies that revolve around the sun. Tomorrow, however, is another story. Tomorrow 'they' may 'know' something that will deem our worldview as ridiculous. 

Kuhn illustrates the historical conditions of the past that have reshaped worldviews, and shows that the cycle and evolution of such world views is by no means stagnant. For me, it provides a historical background to my own view of human knowledge — that we make lots of wonderful toys, but we still don't know dick.

Kunstler calls America a nation of overfed clowns, and writes "[the American highway] is now like television — violent and tawdry. The landscape it runs through is littered with cartoon buildings and commercial messages. We whiz by them at fifty-five miles an hour and forget them, because one convenience store looks like the next. They do not celebrate anything beyond their mechanistic ability to sell merchandise. We don't want to remember them. We did not savor the approach and we were not rewarded upon reaching the destination, and it will be the same next time, and every time. There is little sense of having arrived anywhere, because everyplace looks like no place in particular." This book is well written, well-researched, very critical, and very funny all rolled in one. Admittedly, my favorite parts are the bitter, sarcastic rants against the American Manscape, but there is a lot to learn as well. 

In 1994 I spent a year living in Northern Kentucky (working in nearby Cincinnati). There my mind and soul became overrun by the plastic Twinkie insanity of the sprawling suburban Midwest. By 1995 I was ready to move back to the East Coast. I couldn't afford to move directly back to New York City, so I took a temporary detour to the city where I had grown up — Albany, NY. Much to my dismay, I found that the same Home Depot, Wal-Mart Hell I'd found in the Midwest had crept its way into Albany too. In order to remain somewhat sane, I began venting my frustrations in a new rag called Culture Freak. Then I was given a copy of The Geography of Nowhere by Jim Kunstler. I was psyched to learn that I had a kindred spirit, and so of course I sent him a copy of Culture Freak. 

In return, he sent me a great letter and enough money to earn a lifetime subscription. He earned the title of Culture Freak benefactor.  To learn more about who Jim Kunstler is and what what he does, visit his site.  I particularly recommend his Remarks to Young Writers and eyesore of the month.

Home From Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler, 1996 Simon and Schuster.

This book is a little less fun than its predecessor, but only because it outlines options for how we might remedy the problems of America that Kunstler rants against in The Geography of Nowhere. For this reason, there is less cynicism in the prose (but don't worry, it's still there). Kunstler continues his argument against suburbia:

"Americans are convince that suburbia is great for kids. The truth is, kids older than seven need more from their environment than a safe place to ride their bikes. They need at least the same things adults need. Dignified places to hang out. Shops. Eating establishments. Libraries, museums, and theaters. They need a public realm worthy of respect. All of which they need to access on their own, without our assistance...In suburbia, as things presently stand, children have access only to television. That's their public realm. It's really a wonder that more American children are not completely psychotic."

I once attended a lecture by Jim Kunstler. While describing the horror of the teenager who grows up in the car-dependent suburbs he noted that "there isn't so much as a [place to buy] a stick of gum within five miles of this kid's house. So when your teenager paints himself purple and burns down your house, now you know why."

Kunstler argues strongly against the zoning laws adopted in the 20th century. "Zoning now identifies shopping as an obnoxious industrial activity that must be kept separate from houses. It makes no distinction between a steel mill and a cabinet shop...It produces a cartoon of a human settlement...Zoning inevitably results in sprawl..."

This book explores the new American community. Places like Tysons Corner, VA or Hoffman Estates, Illinois. These locales are not quite urban but not quite suburban either. Urban scholars have dubbed them everything from "technoburbs" to "centerless cities."

But, as Tom Vanderbilt writes in his essay "Revolt of the Nice: Edge City, Capital of the Twenty-First Century," it was Garreau that "seized the zeitgeist and captured the imagination of the journalists and opinion makers who were watching places like Hoffman Estates. Edge City, a brand identity for a phenomenon urban scholars had been long trying to name, was born, and Garreau instantly became brand manager..." I couldn't do a better job at describing this book than Mr. Vanderbilt, so I'll let him take over for a bit:

For Garreau, Edge Cities are not merely another soulless expression of corporate relocation and disposable exurban sprawl. Nor are they suburbs in new clothes. Garreau identifies his product as any place that has at least five million square feet of leasable office space, at least 600,000 square feet of leasable retail space ("the equivalent of a fair sized mall"), "more jobs than bedrooms," is "perceived by by the population as one place," and was "nothing like the 'city' as recently as thirty years ago"...Garreau's odyssey from objective chronicler to Edge City partisan is an unlikely one, as he recounts in the introduction to his book.

When high-rise office buildings began to appear near his home in the Virginia suburbs...he set out to find out "who was doing this to us." Somewhere along the path of investigating this "clear and present danger to Western Civilization," he met the "enemy," he says, and the enemy "was us." Heading in to the heart of blandness, steaming slowly upriver past New Jersey malls and California planned developments, Garreau began to see order among the chaos, hope among the natives, a glimmering future in the wilderness.

In short, Garreau began to like Edge Cities...the bustling new frontier of America, the next wave in the process by which "we" first moved to the suburbs to escape the city, then moved the city's marketplaces to the suburbs for convenience's sake, and now, in a triumph of democratic will, have "moved out means of creating wealth, the essence of urbanism — our jobs — out to where most of us have lived and shopped for two generations."

Edge Cities are the evolutionary mutant child of suburbia. Garreau loves them, but I, like Tom Vanderbilt, have my doubts. I prefer them to traditional suburban sprawl (they are generally walkable, and usually offer more in the way of 'culture') but I still prefer real downtowns and the untainted landscape of the countryside.

While I often found myself biting my lip in disagreement with Mr. Garreau, I will say that his book is an excellent study of this new urban phenomenon. It is replete with facts accepted by urban scholars such as "an American will not walk six hundred feet without getting in her car" (unless he or she is walking in certain places: at an airport, in a mall, or in New York City or other urban places where parking is difficult), and describes the mathematical formulas used by urban developers to plan their malls and mall town Edge Cities.

It is a must for any serious student of urban geography, I highly recommended this book to anyone who looks at our plastic, American manscape and wonders how it all happened. 

*Tom Vanderbilt's essay can be found in the book Commodify Your Dissent which shall be reviewed here in the future

Quite simply, this is a history of the corporate invention of American consumerism. Yes, invention. It is the story of people "like John Wannamaker and Marshall; of promoters who helped turn commmerce into a religion and religious leaders who fine-tuned their doctrines to celebrate happiness through buying." 

The cast of characters alone is amazing. Did you know that L.Frank Baum (author of the Wizard of Oz and many children's books) was a national figure in the then new art of retail window display? When I read about Baum, I saw myself. 

"Baum's work in retailing was almost as important to the development of American culture as were his Oz stories and fantasies...His father, Benjamin, made fast money in the oil fields...[and] founded and directed the Second National Bank of Syracuse...L. Frank Baum himself was not greatly attracted by his father's industrial and banking world. What he liked was the other side of capitalism, the entertainment and consumption side, the 'dream life' side." Baum took up acting in his late teens and was soon writing and directing his own plays. He also undertook a career in merchandizing, starting as a salesman and eventually founding his own department store based on the Woolworth model. Later , he bought an ailing newspaper, in which he wrote almost every story as well as the paper's advertising. "He wanted manufacturing to ensure year-round trade and urged merchants to do whatever was needed to promote consumption. Always the actor above all else, he got a special kick out of the tricks of display that merchants were beginning to master in the 1890s." Baum became a master of what he called 'the arts of decoration and display.' His trade journal, The Show Window became the foremost magazine of the trade. After several name changes, it still exists today as Visual Merchandizing.

But I'm sorry, this is not a biography of L. Frank Baum (though I'm sure I'll be reading that next). As I said, Land of Desire chronicles the heyday of American consumer culture (1880-1930). An amazing work. I'm sure I will refer to it for years to come.

Toxic Sludge is Good for You! Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, 1995 Common Courage Press — the Center for Media and Democracy

This expose of the public relations industry found a happy home on my shelf. The reader learns that the true source of much of their "knowledge" is giant corporations. Consider this: most news stories that find their way to the newspapers are fed to the newswires by PR companies working for a client. Most of these PR companies are owned by advertising companies, and most of the advertising companies are owned by big holding companies like WPC Group PLC. Funny that I randomly chose WPC Group as an example in the last sentence, for it presents a great example of how PR firms shape our lives. You see, WPC Group is the owner of Hill & Knowlton, one of the largest public relations firms in the world, and one, which was largely responsible for American Involvement in the 1991 Gulf War: 

"Nine days after Sadaam' army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's agreed to fund a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent 'Citizens For a Free Kuwait', a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens For a Free Kuwait..."

In fact, the Kuwaiti government funded about 20 PR, law, and lobbying firms to bring America into the war. Kuwait made use of American front groups like the "Coalition for Americans at Risk" which was created in the 1980s to promote the Nicaraguan contras. This one front group alone placed TV and newspaper ads in the US and hired 50 full time public speakers to work pro-war rallies and press conferences. One tactic employed by Citizens For a Free Kuwait (which, you'll remember, was run with Kuwaiti money by Hill & Knowlton which is owned by WPC Group) was to distribute thousands of Free Kuwait t-shirts and bumper stickers to on American college campuses. 

This is the stuff that (my) dreams are made of — propaganda, manipulation of public understanding. It's all here! For more information on the public relations industry visit the Center for Media and Democracy.

The Image - Daniel Boorstin
Life, the Movie - Neal Gabler
Public Opinion - Walter Lippmann
Crystalizing Public Opinion - Edward L. Bernays
Biography of an Idea - Edward L. Bernays
Propaganda - Edward L. Bernays
All Consuming Images - Stuart Ewen
PR! A Social History of Spin - Stuart Ewen
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal - Eric Schlosser
The Press Effect - Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Dirty Politics - Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping - Paco Underhill
Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping - Paco Underhill
Adcult USA - James B. Twitchell
Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks: Chasing the
American Dream in Postwar Consumer Culture - Andrew Hurley
Life, the Movie - Neal Gabler
The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations - Larry Tye
No Applause -- Just Throw Money