The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can Reverse the Trend (Pathways Through the Twenty-First Century)

Written by one of the most insightful critics of American commercialism, The Business of America probes the forces that have transformed citizens into consumers eager to take as much as they can from the planet. From online shopping to spectator sports to the cash-and-carry ethos of political campaigns, Saul Landau decodes the subtle ways in which advertising images tell us to correct our inadequacies with yet more things: SUVs, credit cards, air conditioning, video games. The winds of change are blowing, Landau shows, from resurgent student protests for underpaid janitors to the 'Group of 21', the developing countries that stopped the World Trade Organization dead in its tracks in 2003. Eschewing nostalgia for a simpler time - a less-interconnected world that can never return - The Business of America shows how we as citizens can regain our identities, stripping away the plastic overlay of consumerism.Saul Landau is the author of 'The Business of America: How Consumers Have Replaced Citizens and How We Can Reverse the Trend (Pathways Through the Twenty-First Century)', published 2004 under ISBN 9780415944687 and ISBN 0415944686.