Brought to You By

the long version

From the introduction Between the years 1946 and 1964, American television—and much of American culture—was brought to you by television advertising. The aim of this book is to show how television advertising was ground central for the postwar American Dream, both shaping and reflecting our national ethos of consumption. Brought to You By: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream is designed to fill a gaping hole in the history of advertising and complete a missing chapter of twentieth-century American social history. The postwar years were what I believe to be the most exciting and dynamic period of advertising in America, as the development of the most powerful medium in history dovetailed with a patriotic celebration of consumerism and, of course, with the baby boom. Although television advertising of this era is a fascinating and important cultural site, the subject is conspicuously absent from both popular and scholarly literature. There are many good books on postwar television, but precious few resources dedicated to television advertising. This is unfortunate because it was television advertising that brought television to us and, in the process, assumed a central role in postwar culture. One cannot truly understand postwar America, I believe, without understanding the cultural history of one of its loudest voices.