Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler by Thomas Frank, Matt Weiland ISBN: 0-393-31673-4 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.04 (23 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Insiteful and funny
Comment: This collection of essays provides a gutsy, incisive, and energetic critique of American consumer culture that surpasses and even ridicules the limp, flaccid, self-referential verbiage that academics try to pass off as a "radical", and "critical" examination of culture and power. "Commodify Your Dissent" is a series of critical essays, or "salvos" as the authors prefer to call them, that were printed in The Baffler during the 90's largely in response to the hypocrisy, and gluttony of the America's expanding techno-consumer culture. Using lucid, forthright language, direct examples, and actual critical thinking (not the mental self-gratification generated by tenured radicals) the authors demonstrate how corporate America has commercialized the concept of revolution and employed it along marketing and production guidelines that are-guess what-conformist and conservative. In the 90's culture, as these essays so aptly demonstrate, "free thinking, revolution" and "breaking the rules" really amounted to a double-speak ideology centered around buying more gadgets and helping companies to make more money, a process that was reinforced in words and letters by such "radical" cultural critics as Camille Paglia.
This book is bound to anger a lot of readers because, it's gutsy, direct, and ruthless in its battering of the misused tropes and recycled clichés that enable legions of consumers, workers, and managers to feel like they're breaking the rules when in fact they are merely conforming to and reinforcing them. I know it's a hard fact to face, but buying a recycled pair of bell-bottoms is not an act of rebellion.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Welcome Cannon - No Bobos in Paradise
Comment: Commodify your Dissent is a collection of essays from the Baffler magazine. The essays are social critiques of Mass Media and corporate and consumer culture. They have the sarchastic and hilarious style of H.L. Mencken and, like the latter's work, they end up exposing many false 'truths'. The quality of the writing is excellent, i became extremely envious. My favorite section was The Culture of Business and the critique of businees literature. there are also critiques of commercial grunge music, packaging of artists (one of my favorite essays, exposes pretentious writing for what it is), elites and youth consumerism. You'll learn and laugh. I enjoyed this book so much that I bouught other titles from Thomas Frank and subscribed to the Baffler.
Rating: 2
Summary: enough already..
Comment: Here we go again. The media giants are evil. They have consolidated to the point where a handful now own all the major information venues. They hijack culture in order to sell more schlock. They have turned rebellion into a marketable commodity.
A&R men are sleazy and just out to make a buck.
Corporate America is sick and sucking the life out of us. Publishers do this or that just to sell more books. Etc.
It goes on and on. The essays are really all over the place. A few are interesting and informative, but most are just more of the same negativity we are now accustumed to. Perhaps the essays werent so trite in the mid 90s when they were written, but Ive personally had enough. Not sure if there was one positive, remotely uplifting thing in any of the essays. Understandably, that isnt what the book is about, but I just found it often slanted and overkill. For ex, one full essay is devoted to how Wired magazine is dedicated only to selling its sponsors goods and fueling desire for constant consumption. The author seems to have overlooked that the magazine also discusses exciting scientific breakthroughs and offers articles from some of todays most well respected thinkers.
 |
Title: The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism by Thomas Frank ISBN: 0226260127 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
 |
Title: One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy by Thomas Frank ISBN: 0385495048 Publisher: Anchor Books/Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
 |
Title: Boob Jubilee: The Mad Cultural Politics of the New Economy: Salvos from the Baffler by Thomas Frank, Tom Frank, David Mulcahey, Dave Mulcahey, Studs Terkel ISBN: 0393324303 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
 |
Title: America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism by David F. Noble, David Noble ISBN: 0195026187 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1979 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare by Frances Fox Piven, Richard A. Cloward ISBN: 0679745165 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
