The Adman’s Dilemma

From Barnum to Trump

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Pub Date 18 Sep 2018 | Archive Date 30 Oct 2018

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Description

The Adman’s Dilemma is a cultural biography that explores the rise and fall of the advertising man as a figure who became effectively a licensed deceiver in the process of governing the lives of American consumers.  Apparently this personage was caught up in a contradiction, both compelled to deceive yet supposed to tell the truth.  It was this moral condition and its consequences that made the adman so interesting to critics, novelists, and eventually filmmakers.

     The biography tracks his saga from its origins in the exaggerated doings of P.T. Barnum, the emergence of a new profession in the 1920s, the heyday of the adman’s influence during the post-WW2 era, the later rebranding of the adman as artist, until the apparent demise of the figure, symbolized by the triumph of that consummate huckster, Donald Trump.

    In The Adman’s Dilemma, author Paul Rutherford explores how people inside and outside the advertising industry have understood the conflict between artifice and authenticity. The book employs a range of fictional and nonfictional sources, including memoirs, novels, movies, TV shows, websites, and museum exhibits to suggest how the adman embodied some of the strange realities of modernity

The Adman’s Dilemma is a cultural biography that explores the rise and fall of the advertising man as a figure who became effectively a licensed deceiver in the process of governing the lives...


Advance Praise

“Using a wide variety of representations, from literature, to autobiography, to film and

non-fiction critiques, this book tells the story of the adman, and addresses the ambivalence that practitioners and critics have about capitalism.”

Kathy M. Newman, Associate Professor, Department of English, Carnegie Mellon

University

“I have little hesitation in describing The Adman’s Dilemma as a major contribution to the field. It analyzes an immense body of commentary on and depictions of advertising practice more comprehensively than anyone has attempted before. It includes works of fiction and nonfiction, written by insiders and outsiders, both scholarly and popular. Paul Rutherford’s ability to deliver concise yet authoritative summaries on such a huge range of works is impressive in its own right and will be a valuable resource for scholars.”

Rob Schorman, Department of History, Miami University

“Using a wide variety of representations, from literature, to autobiography, to film and

non-fiction critiques, this book tells the story of the adman, and addresses the ambivalence that...


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Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781487522988
PRICE CA$39.95 (CAD)

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