Thomas Hine

Populuxe

In the groundbreaking work, Thomas Hine examines the American teenager as a social invention shaped by the needs of the twentieth century. With intelligence, insight, imagination, and humorm he traces the culture of youth in America-from the spiritual trials of young Puritans and the vision quests of Native Americans to the media-blitzed consumerism of contempory thirteen-to-nineteen -year-olds. The resulting study is a glorious appreciation of youth that challenges us to confront our sterotypesm, rethink our expectations, and consider anew the lives of those individuals who are blessing, our bane, and our future.

The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

The Secret History and Hidden Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Other Persuasive Containers

The Total Package

Explores the evolution of packaging, and describes the exploits of the hucksters, psychologists, and engineers behind the modern American package

The Evolution and Secret Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Tubes

In the sixties, as the nation anticipated the conquest of space, the defeat of poverty, and an end to injustice at home and abroad, no goal seemed beyond America's reach. Then the seventies arrived-bringing oil shocks and gas lines, the disgrace and resignation of a president, defeat in Vietnam, terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympics, urban squalor, bizarre crimes, high prices, and a bad economy. The country fell into a great funk. But when things fall apart, you can take the fragments and make something fresh. Avocado kitchens and Earth Shoes may have been ugly, but they signaled new modes of seeing and being. The first generation to see Earth from space found ways to make life's everyday routines-eating, keeping warm, taking out the trash-meaningful, both personally and globally. And many decided to reinvent themselves. In Populuxe, a "textbook of consumerism in the Push Button Age" (Alan J. Adler, Los Angeles Times), Thomas Hine scrutinized the looks and life of the 1950s and 1960s, revealing the hopes and fears expressed in that era's design. In the same way, The Great Funk: Falling Apart and Coming Together (on a Shag Rug) in the Seventies maps a complex era by looking at its ideas, feelings, sex, fashions, textures, gestures, colors, demographic forces, artistic expressions, and other phenomena that shaped our lives. Hine gets into the shoes and heads of those who experienced the seventies-exploring their homes, feeling the beat of their music, and scanning the ads that incited their desires. But The Great Funk is more than a lavish catalogue of seventies culture: it's a smart, informed, lively look at the "Me decade" through the eyes of the man House & Garden called "America's sharpest design critic."

Falling Apart and Coming Together (on a Shag Rug) in the Seventies

The Great Funk

Shopping has a lot in common with sex. Just about everybody does it. Some people brag about how well they do it. Some keep it a secret. And both provide ample opportunities to make foolish choices. Choosing and using objects is a primal human activity, and I Want That! is nothing less than a portrait of humanity as the species that shops. It explores the history of acquisition -- finding, choosing, spending -- from our amber-coveting Neolithic forebears to Renaissance nobles who outfitted themselves for power to twenty-first-century bargain hunters looking for a good buy on eBay. I Want That! explores the minds of shoppers in the quest to nourish and feed fantasies, to define individuality, to provide for family, and to satisfy the needs for celebration, power, and choice -- all of which lead us to malls, boutiques, websites, and superstores.

How We All Became Shoppers

I Want That!

Pat Kirkham

Martin P. Eidelberg

C. Ford Peatross

David Hanks

"This book is the first in-depth study of one of the most revered pieces of American furniture, and its equally revered creators. The Eames Lounge Chair explores the design in detail, shedding new light on its development and construction, and on the role played by Ray Eames in its genesis. In situating the Lounge Chair in its cultural, social, and historical contexts, the book reveals its provocative positioning in relation to Modernism and the trajectory of twentieth century design, through its combination of traditional and modern materials, mechanical production, and hand-finishing. The personal and professional recollections of those who knew Charles and Ray Eames confirm the Lounge Chair's enduring appeal and powerful presence, from its arrival - to critical acclaim - in the mid-1950s, when it promised a more comfortable life to postwar Americans, to its latterday appearance in fiction and film as an icon of "Mid-Century Modern" design - and a key indicator of design awareness." "With more than two hundred illustrations, including a superb photographic essay and previously unpublished drawings, film stills, and personal correspondence, this book is the definitive survey of the Lounge Chair and a tribute to its remarkable creators, who, above all, "took their pleasures seriously." The Eames Lounge Chair is essential reading for anyone interested in Modernist design."--BOOK JACKET.

Thomas Hine

About

Books

Join the club