Anxieties of Affluence

by Horowitz, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9781558495043
• ISBN10: 1558495045
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-30
• Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Pr

Summary

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. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Daniel Horowitz is Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of American Studies at Smith College

Table of Contents

Tables	ix
Introduction	1	(19)
1. Chastened Consumption: World War II and the Campaign for a Democratic Standard of Living	20	(28)
2. Celebratory Emigres: Ernest Dichter and George Katona	48	(31)
3. A Southerner in Exile, the Cold War, and Social Order: David M. Potter's People of Plenty	79	(22)
4. Critique from Within: John Kenneth Galbraith, Vance Packard, and Betty Friedan	101	(28)
5. From the Affluent Society to the Poverty of Affluence, 1960-1962: Paul Goodman, Oscar Lewis, Michael Harrington, and Rachel Carson	129	(33)
6. Consumer Activism, 1965-1970: Ralph Nader, Martin Luther King Jr., and Paul R. Ehrlich	162	(41)
7. The Energy Crisis and the Quest to Contain Consumption: Daniel Bell, Christopher Lasch, and Robert Bellah	203	(22)
8. Three Intellectuals and a President: Jimmy Carter, "Energy and the Crisis of Confidence"	225	(20)
Epilogue: The Response to Affluence at the End of the Century	245	(12)
Notes	257	(62)
Acknowledgments	319	(4)
Index	323