The Dream of a New Social Order

This study explores how magazines became the first mass medium in the USA and how they expressed a new American culture built on dreams of a better future. The author argues that the birth of the popular magazine at the turn of the 20th century laid the foundations of the modern consumer culture.

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This study explores how magazines became the first mass medium in the USA and how they expressed a new American culture based on "dreams" of a better future. Schneirov argues that the birth of the popular magazine at the turn of the century helped to form the foundations of contemporary consumer culture. Revolutionary concepts and products from the skyscraper to the automobile were extolled in these publications as symbols of the might of science and technology that would irrevocably change modern living. Photographs from 19th-and 20th-century magazines interspersed throughout the text illustrate the impetus to dream of a new social order.