Buy This Book brings together an outstanding international collection of writings on advertising and consumption. The work is based on new historical, textual and ethnographic research and adds substantially to the theoretical and case study literature in the field.

Contributors from Britain, continental Europe and North America consider the history, industry practices, textual strategies and public consumption of advertising, and changes in consumer imagery and identity. Eschewing a uniformity of approach and perspective, Buy This Book confirms the interdisciplinarity of this expanding area of study. It also shows how a focus on consumption interrogates assumptions within disciplines.

The book includes analyses of British and American consumption since 1945; the consumer as the imaginary subject of advertisers; the challenge of the Benetton campaigns; music, image and nostalgia in advertising; the marketing of Latino culture; safe sex and pleasure in condom advertising; the family and consumption in postwar Europe; power dressing; politics and negative advertising in North America; adultery and the promotion of cars.