Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture.

Adcult USA, which is a paean to American advertising, suggests that advertising has been the dominant meaning-making system in American culture; that advertising does not create artificial desire but rather satisfies cravings that were there in the first place; and that advertising serves to unify our fragmented society by providing common references that we can identify with. It makes its arguments in 279 pages replete with illustrations and examples of familiar ads and advertising campaigns.

James B. Twitchell, the author, disagrees with William Wordsworth's thought that "getting and spending we lay waste our powers."

Twitchell believes, "Human beings like things. We buy things. We like to exchange things. We steal things. We donate things. We live through things. We call these things goods as in goods and services. We do not call them bads." As Twitchell puts it, "If Greece gave the world philosophy, Britain gave drama, Austria gave music, Germany gave politics, and Italy gave art, America gave mass-produced objects." These objects are largely sold with advertising.

The American Association of Advertising Agencies claims that in the United States today, the average adult sees and hears some three thousand advertisements each day. A.C. Nielson Co. reports that children, who watch an average of more than twenty-eight hours of television a week (which translates into approximately 180 "school days" per year), will spend years "of their lives" watching commercials. Since TV is such a preponderant conveyor of information, one might consider TV advertising as the educational programming of a capitalist-oriented economic system.

Educators and academicians do not generally have good things to say about advertising. Twitchell believes this is because advertising is stealing their thunder. He illustrates this by telling how his college students enthusiastically match advertising slogans with their products, while barely showing any interest in matching literary and historical entries selected from E.B. Hirsh's Cultural Literacy. Rather than fight the tide, Twitchell suggests that American academics emulate the French who have a show on their TV called "Culture Pub" where intellectuals analyze and discuss ads. Perhaps American academics have not followed their French counterparts because they believe that:

Advertising is the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

- Stephen Leacock

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear better.

- George Santayana 

A considerable part of our ability, energy, time and material resources is being spent today on inducing us to find the money for buying material goods that we should have never dreamed of wanting had we been left to ourselves.

- Arnold Toynbee