Reviews for Land of desire

The average rating for Land of desire based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-10-26 00:00:00 Austin Travis a damn fine book detailing the transition in America from a culture of need and use to a culture of want. Manufactured demand gets a good looking-at in this book. Leach also gives some good stuff about the beginnings of advertising and design used to entice people to buy shit they don't need.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-09-02 00:00:00 Michael Nesbit "Land of Desire" traces the rise of American consumer culture since the late 1800's from several viewpoints: individuals purchasing goods, businesses retailing them, advertisers discovering how to spur demand for new items, the entry of fashion into mass marketing, and government encouragement of production and sales. The most interesting parts of the book dealt with the rise of large department stores, and the ways they evolved increasingly effective ways to generate demand for goods that people, initially, expressed no interest in buying. The tone of the book is on the academic side, and often degenerated into recitations of actors or events with little insight into each, but overall I found it interesting enough to finish.