A Nation of Salesmen: The Tyranny of the Market and the Subversion of Culture
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.42 (554 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0393334082 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 356 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-05-21 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
From Publishers Weekly Shorris, a former ad executive and a contributing editor to Harper's, argues that selling has become the dominant activity in American life, creating a marketing mentality that has corroded our culture, language and values. . Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc
Collection of pretentiously written articles about salesmanship Eduardo W I bought this book a long time ago hoping it was more of a sociological study about salesmanship in America; it is not. It's a collection of articles from Earl Shorris that appeared in several magazines. That's not the real problem here, but the lack of substance and the constant use of notes (some of which are really unnatural) from famous people in order to beef up the concept, as if the wr. Reminiscences of a veteran marketeer. In the tradiiton of shamans and tricksters of all ages, witchdoctors have lived with their feet in both worlds, one physical and one unseen, and Mr Shorris, the author of this book has also lived in two worlds, both equally esoteric. One was advertising, but more appropriately, a high level marketing consultancy and the other universe was literary, the apparently dull drawn out intellectualis. Shorris highlights a basic trait of the American character. James W. Chan (asiamark@pipeline.com) I enjoyed reading the book. Earl Shorris has the courage and insight to expose the salesman in us all. I find his line on page 268--"To do this (selling) successfully the saleman has to follow the disciplines of his calling: Primarily, he cannot make judgements"--a key point in his book. Although I think it is too harsh to call a salesman a "serpent", I agree with the author that if all we do
Demand would have to be created in order to sustain the expansion of markets, and then, as the economy became oversold, the role of the salesman changed: his task was now to kill the competition. Shorris focuses on the perfection of this particular art here in America, where the vast frontier with its isolated settlements cast the salesman in a heroic role: he was literally the bearer of culture, the source of a panoply of needed and wanted items, everything from parasols to plowshares. Shorris shows us how America became a nation of salesmen, and what this means to our economy, our politics, our culture, and our character - especially our freedom to live as dignified persons.. He was Prometheus. Out of these stories and insights emerges a chilling new paradigm of humanlife in our times: that of homo vendens. If Adam is the archetype of man, and Eve of woman, then the serpent who sold the apple to Eve in the Garden of Eden was the first salesman: all culture and commerce flow from that act. In this groundbreaking book on the nature and meaning of the sale, Earl Shorris takes us on a journey that starts in Eden and comes at last to a consideration of where we are and what we have become in late twentieth-century America, where selling has finally become the dominant human activity. All of this changed dramatically in the years following Worl