Volume 42, Number 12 · July 13, 1995
A Billboard Lovely as a Tree
By Henry Allen
Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America
by Jackson Lears
BasicBooks, 492 pp., $30.00
I thought I'd learned all about the Puritans' take on advertising from accounts of Salem divines igniting the occasional witch as a public service announcement. I discovered I was wrong one day in the Cathedral at York. I was staring at the stump of a tiny vandalized statue of the Virgin. Long ago, some Roundhead had lopped her off like a suburbanite lopping off a toadstool with a nine iron. How briskly righteous, how chillingly petty, I thought. How philistine.
Review, 2701 words
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