The study of advertising and its treatment of utopian appeal enhance our understanding of consumer culture. By looking into the advertising page, we also look into consumers’ desires and the process by which these desires are reshaped and rechanneled through images and narratives created solely for the purpose of making a sale.Utopian Images and Narratives in Advertising: Dreams for Sale, edited by Luigi Manca, Alessandra Manca, and Gail W. Pieper, is a collection of essays which g...

New York Times BestsellerAn exciting--and encouraging--exploration of creativity from the author of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect TimingThe future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.Drawing on research from around the wor...

A crisp, passionately argued answer to the question that everyone who's grown dependent on digital devices is asking: "Where's the rest of my life?"At a time when we're all trying to make sense of our relentlessly connected lives, this revelatory book presents a bold new approach to the digital age. Part intellectual journey, part memoir, Hamlet's BlackBerry sets out to solve what William Powers calls the conundrum of connectedness. Our computers and mobile devices do wond...

Spreadable Media maps fundamental changes taking place in our contemporary media environment, a space where corporations no longer tightly control media distribution and many of us are directly involved in the circulation of content. It contrasts “stickiness”—aggregating attention in centralized places—with “spreadability”—dispersing content widely through both formal and informal networks,some approved, many unauthorized. Stickiness has been the measure of success in the broadcas...

With the popularity of Michael Moore, Adbusters magazine and Naomi Klein’s No Logo, it’s hard to ignore the growing tide of resistance to our corporate-controlled world. But do these vocal opponents of the status quo offer us a real political alternative?In this lively blend of pop culture, history and philosophical analysis, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter argue that this countercultural opposition to "the system" has not only been unproductive but has helped to c...

A brand’s meaning—how it resonates in the public heart and mind—is a company’s most valuable competitive advantage. Yet, few companies really know how brand meaning works, how to manage it, and how to use brand meaning strategically. Written by best-selling author Carol S. Pearson (The Hero Within) and branding guru Margaret Mark, this groundbreaking book provides the illusive and compelling answer. Using studies drawn from the experiences of Nike, Marlboro, Ivory and other powerhouse bran...

Strategies from a noted educational consultant on how to ease the pressure, ace the essay, and gain admission into your top-choice schoolGetting into college has become fiercely competitive, which makes the personal-essay part of the application process even more important–and stressful. But stop worrying! In Write Your College Essay in Less Than a Day, Elizabeth Wissner-Gross–a top educational strategist in this area who counsels students at schools across the cou...

Modern culture’s worship of “how-to” pragmatism has turned us into instruments of efficiency and commerce—but we’re doing more and more about things that mean less and less. We constantly ask “how? and still struggle to find purpose and act on what matters. Instead of acting on what we know to be of importance, we wait for bosses to change, we seek the latest fad, we invest in one more degree. Asking how keeps us safe—instead of being led by our hearts into uncharted territory, we keep our...

The Consumer Society Reader features a range of key works on the nature and evolution of consumer society. Included here is much-discussed work by leading critics such as Jean Baudrillard, Susan Bordo, Dick Hebdige, bell hooks, and Janice Radway. Also included is a full range of classics, such as Frankfurt School writers Adorno and Horkheimer on the Culture Industry; Thorstein Veblen's oft-cited writings on "conspicuous consumption"; Betty Friedan on the housewife's central role i...

Ethical intelligence may not get as much attention as other forms of “smarts,” but as Bruce Weinstein shows, it is the most practical, valuable, and even courageous form, determining success on the job, ful?llment in relationships, and sense of self-worth. After reviewing the ?ve basic ethical principles agreed upon by cultures and religious traditions around the world and throughout time, Weinstein shows readers how to develop their ethics IQ by applying these principles in daily life. Re...

How are children-and their parents-affected by the world's most influential corporation? Henry A. Giroux explores the surprisingly diverse ways in which Disney, while hiding behind a cloak of innocence and entertainment, strives to dominate global media and shape the desires, needs, and futures of today's children.

Most of us recognize that organizations are everywhere. You meet them on every street corner in the form of families and shops, study in them, work for them, buy from them, pay taxes to them. But have you given much thought to where they came from, what they are today, and what they might become in the future? How and why do they have so much influence over us, and what influences them? How do they contribute to and detract from the meaningfulness of lives, and how might we improve them so...