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Rating: 
Summary: Advertising co-opted the counterculture and...?
Review: Frank's work with the Baffler and the Reader has always been enlightening and entertaining. As essays for the casual reader, his writing can do a lot of eye-opening. However, I don't think he can sustain his brand of cultural criticism for a book-length work. The problem, after Frank's thesis is repeated for the umpteenth time, is you finally say "So?" I personally always wind up picturing Frank in clothes he has spun himself, living off beans he is cultivating in a backyard seed plot, entertaining himself by sneering from his garret's window at the shallow "lifestyles" of every human being on the planet (except his own). I've always disliked the hypocritical, distant stance people like Frank (whose views I happen to mostly share)adopt when they tackle these issues. The great problem is how to relate these kinds of ideas without pretensions of immunity to the dominant cultural malaise, without relentlessly stereotyping the middle class, and without the hopelessly easy targeting of lame ducks, ducks that Frank seems to consider strong and insidious. Tom Frank, what are the alternatives? Where are the solutions?
Rating: 
Summary: ...
Review: in fact, Frank's point is that advertising did NOT necessarily co-opt counterculture. if he labors over anything, it's his assertion that the Creative Revolution in business practically preceded the existence of a widespread counter-culture movement. as far as his scorn, it was rather obviously directed only at the baby-boomers and historians with bad memories...the ones who insist that 60s youth culture was completely non-commercial, the ones who need to believe in The Man (especially the man in the gray suit). i thought that the book was extremely engaging. frank is very insightful, and his writing is entertaining. i laughed a lot, and said, "Right, exactly!" so many times. i did not get any sense that frank had any real trouble with the conquest of cool or even consumer culture. he develops his thesis so precisely that there was no room for censure. as far as offering a solution--the book doesn't present any Problem to be solved. it's an examination of the relationship between commercial and counter culture. Most importantly, it's a rethinking of that relationship through the lens of the late 50s and 60s.
Rating: 
Summary: Zach Robbins, honestly...
Review: Thomas Frank's work in this book is extremely in depth, his knowledge of the marketing revolution of the 60's is probably the most exhaustive you will find, and this book is definitely worth reading. There are definitely problems with his writing and his ability to take the reader above the mundane details and obvious deductions of his work. However, the type of person willing to read this book is probably looking for pure information and not counting on any sort of entertaining odyssey, and that's good because it isn't very entertaining. The thesis is proved, and proved over again, and over again again. The same things are repeated over and over with different titles and contexts until one starts to wonder whether this book was really worth maxing out at 250 some odd pages. But such is the nature of information.
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