Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

While the youth counterculture remains the most evocative and best-remembered symbol of the cultural ferment of the 1960s, the revolution that shook American business during those boom years has gone largely unremarked. In this fascinating and revealing study, Thomas Frank shows how the youthful revolutionaries were joined--and even anticipated --by such unlikely allies as the advertising industry and the men's clothing business.

"[Thomas Frank is] perhaps the most provocative young cultural critic of the moment."--Gerald Marzorati, New York Times Book Review

"An indispensable survival guide for any modern consumer."-- Publishers Weekly , starred review

"Frank makes an ironclad case not only that the advertising industry cunningly turned the countercultural rhetoric of revolution into a rallying cry to buy more stuff, but that the process itself actually predated any actual counterculture to exploit."--Geoff Pevere, Toronto Globe and Mail

" The Conquest of Cool helps us understand why, throughout the last third of the twentieth century, Americans have increasingly confused gentility with conformity, irony with protest, and an extended middle finger with a populist manifesto. . . . His voice is an exciting addition to the soporific public discourse of the late twentieth century."--T. J. Jackson Lears, In These Times

"An invaluable argument for anyone who has ever scoffed at hand-me-down counterculture from the '60s. A spirited and exhaustive analysis of the era's advertising."--Brad Wieners, Wired Magazine

"Tom Frank is . . . not only old-fashioned, he's anti-fashion, with a place in his heart for that ultimate social faux pas, leftist politics."--Roger Trilling, Details

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments
• 1 A Cultural Perpetual Motion Machine: Management Theory and Consumer Revolution in the 1960s
• 2 Buttoned Down: High Modernism on Madison Avenue
• 3 Advertising as Cultural Criticism: Bill Bernbach versus the Mass Society
• 4 Three Rebels: Advertising Narratives of the Sixties
• 5 ""How Do We Break These Conformists of Their Conformity?"": Creativity Conquers All
• 6 Think Young: Youth Culture and Creativity
• 7 The Varieties of Hip: Advertisements of the 1960s
• 8 Carnival and Cola: Hip versus Sq

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Hoping to tap the youth dollar, in 1968 Columbia Records claimed "The Man Can't Bust Our Music." That same year, a sports-coat manufacturer urged buyers to "Tune in. Turn on. Step out" while so attired. Such ads have become infamous, proof of both capitalism's limitless capacity for co-optation and the counterculture's decline from radicalism to market share. But, as this bristlingly intelligent work documents, the story is a good deal more complicated. Frank, editor of the underground cultural-criticism journal The Baffler, stops short of claiming that advertising invented the counterculture, but he adroitly illuminates the intricacies behind familiar stories about the '60s by revealing how completely these ads, aimed at the hip consumer, harmonized with admen's changing values as well. Indeed, rebellion on Madison Avenue often preceded rebellion on campus. In accessible, muscular prose, Frank traces agencies' revolt against inflated '50s jargon ("Quadra-Power Roadability") and creation of aggressively hip spots that simultaneously mocked consumer culture's empty promises and sold consumption-as-rebellion. Today, that style dominates the marketplace; every ad hastens to preempt viewer skepticism with a sneer of its own‘but also assures him or her that "this" product is an exception. Though occasionally repetitive (we don't need to hear every adman's organizational theories), this book is frequently brilliant, an indispensable survival guide for any modern consumer. (Nov.) FYI: Frank and Baffler managing editor Matt Weiland have selected articles from the magazine's first decade in Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler. (Norton, $15 paper 256p ISBN 0-393-31673-4; cloth $25 -04621-4) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

Frank takes an informative and entertaining look into the advertising business during the 1960s. Focusing on the relationship that existed between the world of commerce and the counterculture movement of those turbulent years, he describes how Madison Avenue shaped attitudes and turned youthful nonconformists into consumers. Using such classic examples as 7-Up's "Uncola" campaign, Volkswagen's humorous "ugly" car ads, Virginia Slim's "You've come a long way, baby" cigarette ads, and others, Frank shows how advertisers converted the concept of "cool" into cash. Tapping into the rebellious spirit of the times to reach the baby boom generation, the ad agencies themselves changed as gray flannel suits gave way to blue jeans and small, creative "boutique" agencies emerged to take on the corporate advertising giants. Well written with an extensive notes section, The Conquest of Cool should be of equal interest to historians and business people. Highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate business students, researchers, and marketing professionals. P. G. Kishel Cypress College

Booklist Review

One of the most damning charges one could make during the 1960s was to accuse "the Establishment" of co-opting the principles or ideals of the so-called counterculture. Frank's look back at this period shows that the question of who subverted whom may be moot. Frank edits the Baffler, a quarterly published at the University of Chicago that examines popular culture and the "cultural industry." This book, a popularized version of his doctoral dissertation entitled The Commercialization of Dissent, examines advertising and men's fashion. Frank argues that many executives working in these two industries were themselves products of the counterculture and that, rather than exploit prevailing attitudes and trends, they helped dramatically and permanently transform the face of business. The many examples Frank uses to bolster his case make for a fascinating flashback. --David Rouse