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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: I would have given this book 5 stars, had it not been for the full page ad in the back for a new Taschen porno book, blech (ditto for the '40s book!). Could definitely do without that. The archived ads are wonderful. A great way to study or teach American culture, and a trip down a graphics memory lane. I hope that a '60s ad book is on the way.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book, with just one proviso
Review: On reading quite a bit about this book online before ordering, I was convinced that All American Ads of the 50s so thoroughly matched my interests that it was going to be the last book I would have to buy for a while, and certainly the last book on this subject. --Wouldn't it be nice if life really WAS that simple? This book is the ultimate vault of old ad gold, and one is hesitant to criticize at all. But... The one thing about All American Ads that really bugs me is the big grainy blowups that fill too many spreads here. The full page ads are joys forever. But jumping back and forth between creamy, crisp, photographically reduced perfection of reproduction on one hand, and overextended, grainy enlargements of detail on the other makes for a somewhat disjoint experience. This one gripe aside, it is a book you absolutely MUST have if you care about old ads and old popular and sociopolitical culture.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, amusing, a bargain at this price
Review: Over a 1000 full color adverts from cake mix to cars to computers. If you're a designer looking for inspiration, a historian looking for insight, a collector looking for the original advert for that piece of 50's kitsch you just bought, or you just like the 50's look, get this book. It's so huge I keep finding new stuff every time I leaf through it. I loved the ads for 1950's office computers.
Rating:
Summary: Capitalism at work.
Review: Taschen does it again! An amazing book of 928 pages with 1400 illustrations. The material is arranged in ten chapters and each has dozens of relevant magazine ads. What I particularly liked about this massive volume was the way all this colorful material has been handled, not a singe ad has been angled or overlapped on another. Here the pace is generated by running one ad over a spread, enlarging a section over a spread, having one ad per page or in a minority of cases running four ads on a page. I think the designers took the view that reading the ad copy was as important as looking at all the amazing pictures. I also liked the range of material, besides the obvious consumer product advertising there are plenty of trade ads from the commercial sector. Stunning though this material is I do have a couple of minor objections, a few of the ads have text that has run off the page and I would have prefered to see a thin black line define the edge of the ads where they are four to the page. This is the first volume of a series that will cover All-American ads of past decades and if they are all is good as this book it will be an incredible collection.
Rating:
Summary: Capitalism at work.
Review: Taschen does it again! An amazing book of 928 pages with 1400 illustrations. The material is arranged in ten chapters and each has dozens of relevant magazine ads. What I particularly liked about this massive volume was the way all this colorful material has been handled, not a singe ad has been angled or overlapped on another. Here the pace is generated by running one ad over a spread, enlarging a section over a spread, having one ad per page or in a minority of cases running four ads on a page. I think the designers took the view that reading the ad copy was as important as looking at all the amazing pictures. I also liked the range of material, besides the obvious consumer product advertising there are plenty of trade ads from the commercial sector. Stunning though this material is I do have a couple of minor objections, a few of the ads have text that has run off the page and I would have prefered to see a thin black line define the edge of the ads where they are four to the page. This is the first volume of a series that will cover All-American ads of past decades and if they are all is good as this book it will be an incredible collection.
Rating:
Summary: You are what you eat - or wear - or buy .....
Review: There are many reasons to look backwards. For one, it may help to figure out where one is by looking at where one has been. For another, one might rethink where one is going by looking at the ideals and goals of the past. One might assess societies as a whole in some grand way, such as its military budget or the outcome of elections, but for us common folk, there is no way to tell what is on our minds better than a look at what we are buying. This book is an absolutely fascinating compendium of the culture of the 50's - of our desires, our habits, our values, as told in its advertisements. On one level it is an amusing recollection of what we once thought was cool. On another it is a profound study of the sociology of America in a time of idealism and innocence. I saw many, if not most of these ads myself when they were originally published. That being said, I must add that the recollection of the feelings I had at that time is not entirely comfortable. On this other level, that of gut feelings, the book can be is a compendium of an appeal to the senses, to a culture of need, of having. One must look pretty deep to find any spiritual values here, and I think that the conspicuous absense of any moral sense is what is most interesting about it. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned by those of us who look back is that the promises of those who offer us happiness by just one more purchase are really empty. Read this and be nostalgic, amused, reflective, and, just maybe, a little sad.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is an absolutely fabulous series -- I eagerly anticipate the remaining volumes. Certainly they are excellent and enjoyable volumes for people interested in American design and popular culture, but I'm also finding them a great way to start teaching my young daughter about American history. Looking at 1950s liquor ads led to a discussion of Prohibition, which led to a discussion of gangster movies, and why everything in the 50s was trying to look like a rocket while consumer items of the 30s and 40s were rounded and "streamlined..." and so on. It's a great way for children to realize that clues about history (and the hidden agendas of marketers, for that matter) are everywhere around us, and that while wars and the deeds of the great are part of history, there's more to it than that.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Series
Review: This is an absolutely fabulous series -- I eagerly anticipate the remaining volumes. Certainly they are excellent and enjoyable volumes for people interested in American design and popular culture, but I'm also finding them a great way to start teaching my young daughter about American history. Looking at 1950s liquor ads led to a discussion of Prohibition, which led to a discussion of gangster movies, and why everything in the 50s was trying to look like a rocket while consumer items of the 30s and 40s were rounded and "streamlined..." and so on. It's a great way for children to realize that clues about history (and the hidden agendas of marketers, for that matter) are everywhere around us, and that while wars and the deeds of the great are part of history, there's more to it than that.
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