Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture

Captains of Consciousness is a useful but agenda-driven history of the American advertising industry in the early 20th century. The key facts of Ewen's presentation are accurate and important, but he too often has a Chomsky-like strategy of cherry-picking the most nefarious-sounding statements from industry executives, and then assuming (but not proving) that their advertisements altered consumer consciousness.