This is a gorgeous confection of a book...As Seen on TV manages to plug directly into the more mundane fads and fashions of popular culture.
New Statesman and Society - Angela McRobbie
Karal Ann Marling's book is an invitation to celebrate the dawning of the world as television...[She] lovingly guides us through this landscape, the world of what design critic Thomas Hine called the "populuxe," glitz and glitter for the postwar masses...The whole period has found a sympathetic chronicler in Marling and her account of the influence of television on 1950s America makes for fascinating reading.
Times Higher Education Supplement - Gareth Stanton
Irresistible...Karal Ann Marling's enthusiasm is refreshing, entertaining and imaginative. Her energy is infectious...She manages to make the decade that time forgot come alive.
Los Angeles Times - Karen Stabiner
In this entertaining and informative book, Marling uses a variety of visual icons of the 1950s to depict the decade as an ocean of vibrant color, movement and style...[She] is one of this country's strongest advocates of the study of popular culture. She is also one of our most eloquent analysts of the meanings to be found in objects. Her book's multilayered, dizzying descriptions...plunge the reader into a culture drunk on color and form. They testify to the complex cultural significance with which Americans in the postwar years invested commonplace objects and images. They also blur the lines between aesthetics and sociology...Marling's full and convincing interpretations of the objects under discussion exhibit both humor and empathy.
Boston Globe - Tinky "Dakota" Weisblat
As Seen on TV combines high seriousness and just plain fun. It's a pleasure to read...Marling is as mercilessly convincing as she is witty and bright. Her stinging portrait of the 1950s easily extends beyond that much-satirized decade, enabling us to see its primitive reflection in today's popular culture and mass markets.
eattle Times - Joseph F. Keppler
As Seen on TV offers fresh, imaginative readings of individual artifacts, particularly Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book and television commercials for automobiles. Moving Beyond text to context, chapters on the ongoing spectacle at Disneyland and the one-time-only "Kitchen Debate" between Nixon and Khruschev provide suggestive rereadings of familiar topics. [The book] becomes most interesting when imaginatively leaping from one set of cultural products or practices to another. It glides from Mamie Eisenhower's New Look to the 'Chemise' or 'sack dress'..As Seen on TV draws on an extensive, eclectic array of sources: presidential archives, museum collections, business publications, scholarly accounts, popular histories, and even the responses of listeners to Professor Marling's appearances on radio talk shows
Reviews in American History - Norman L. Rosenberg
[Marling] offers in seven chapters some witty riffs on 50s themes: the topics evoked in As Seen on TV are, in order, women's fashion, amateur painting, the arrival of Disneyland, those fabulous finned autos, the taming of Elvis Presley, home cooking and Richard Nixon's "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev...[It is] an intellectual romp, a dizzying free fall through the exuberant 'visual culture' of that first post-World War II decade.--John Updike "New York Times Book Review"Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book and television commercials for automobiles. Moving Beyond text to context, chapters on the ongoing spectacle at Disneyland and the one-time-only "Kitchen Debate" between Nixon and Khruschev provide suggestive rereadings of familiar topics. [The book] becomes most interesting when imaginatively leaping from one set of cultural products or practices to another. It glides from Mamie Eisenhower's New Look to the 'Chemise' or 'sack dress'..As Seen on TV draws on an extensive, eclectic array of sources: presidential archives, museum collections, business publications, scholarly accounts, popular histories, and even the responses of listeners to Professor Marling's appearances on radio talk shows--Norman L. Rosenberg "Reviews in American History"As Seen on TV combines high seriousness and just plain fun. It's a pleasure to read...Marling is as mercilessly convincing as she is witty and bright. Her stinging portrait of the 1950s easily extends beyond that much-satirized decade, enabling us to see its primitive reflection in today's popular culture and mass markets.--Joseph F. Keppler "eattle Times"As Seen on TV manages to plug directly into the more mundane fads and fashions of popular culture.--Angela McRobbie "New Statesman and Society"
[Marling] offers in seven chapters some witty riffs on 50s themes: the topics evoked in As Seen on TV are, in order, women's fashion, amateur painting, the arrival of Disneyland, those fabulous finned autos, the taming of Elvis Presley, home cooking and Richard Nixon's "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev...[It is] an intellectual romp, a dizzying free fall through the exuberant 'visual culture' of that first post-World War II decade.
New York Times Book Review - John Updike
As Seen on TV combines high seriousness and just plain fun. It's a pleasure to read...Marling is as mercilessly convincing as she is witty and bright. Her stinging portrait of the 1950s easily extends beyond that much-satirized decade, enabling us to see its primitive reflection in today's popular culture and mass markets.
Karal Ann Marling's book is an invitation to celebrate the dawning of the world as television...[She] lovingly guides us through this landscape, the world of what design critic Thomas Hine called the "populuxe," glitz and glitter for the postwar masses...The whole period has found a sympathetic chronicler in Marling and her account of the influence of television on 1950s America makes for fascinating reading.
Times Higher Education Supplement
This is a gorgeous confection of a book...As Seen on TV manages to plug directly into the more mundane fads and fashions of popular culture.
New Statesman and Society
In this entertaining and informative book, Marling uses a variety of visual icons of the 1950s to depict the decade as an ocean of vibrant color, movement and style...[She] is one of this country's strongest advocates of the study of popular culture. She is also one of our most eloquent analysts of the meanings to be found in objects. Her book's multilayered, dizzying descriptions...plunge the reader into a culture drunk on color and form. They testify to the complex cultural significance with which Americans in the postwar years invested commonplace objects and images. They also blur the lines between aesthetics and sociology...Marling's full and convincing interpretations of the objects under discussion exhibit both humor and empathy.
As Seen on TV offers fresh, imaginative readings of individual artifacts, particularly Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book and television commercials for automobiles. Moving Beyond text to context, chapters on the ongoing spectacle at Disneyland and the one-time-only "Kitchen Debate" between Nixon and Khruschev provide suggestive rereadings of familiar topics. [The book] becomes most interesting when imaginatively leaping from one set of cultural products or practices to another. It glides from Mamie Eisenhower's New Look to the 'Chemise' or 'sack dress'..As Seen on TV draws on an extensive, eclectic array of sources: presidential archives, museum collections, business publications, scholarly accounts, popular histories, and even the responses of listeners to Professor Marling's appearances on radio talk shows
Reviews in American History
Irresistible...Karal Ann Marling's enthusiasm is refreshing, entertaining and imaginative. Her energy is infectious...She manages to make the decade that time forgot come alive.
[Marling] offers in seven chapters some witty riffs on 50s themes: the topics evoked in As Seen on TV are, in order, women's fashion, amateur painting, the arrival of Disneyland, those fabulous finned autos, the taming of Elvis Presley, home cooking and Richard Nixon's "kitchen debate" with Nikita Khrushchev...[It is] an intellectual romp, a dizzying free fall through the exuberant 'visual culture' of that first post-World War II decade.
New York Times Book Review
Historian Marling (Iwo Jima: Monuments and the American Hero ) takes us back to those early days of television, when Ike was in the White House and everybody loved Lucy. The author explains TV's tremendous influence: it allowed Mrs. Eisenhower to give the nation the "Mamie Look,'' and advertised both Disneyland and the big-business "leisure society'' created by the 40-hour workweek. Marling also looks into America's love affair with the automobile ("Drive your Chev-ro-lay through the USA,'' sang Dinah Shore); the importance of Elvis and Betty Crocker; and Cold War politics, featuring Richard Nixon in the kitchen with Nikita Khrushchev. A nostalgic, informative and sometimes funny view of 1950's American culture. Photos. (Sept.)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Marling (art history, American studies, U. of Minnesota) captures a visual culture reflecting and reflected in the new medium of television in the 1950s. She looks at instances in which the principles of design dominated the public arena, such as Mamie Eisenhower's new look, Disneyland, America's love affair with the car, Betty Crocker's cook book, and Nixon in Moscow. Includes b&w photos. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
