Second in a series of books featuring advertising by era, All-American Ads of the 50s offers page after page of products that made up the happy-days decade. The start of the cold war spurred a buying frenzy and a craze for new technology that required ad campaigns to match. The nuclear age left its mark all over the advertisements, with a spotlight on planes, rockets, and even mushroom clouds. Shiny, big, beautiful cars abound, styled to keep up with the space age. Editor Jim Heimann, in his essay "From Poodles to Presley, Americans Enter the Atomic Age," explains: "Car designers came up with exaggerated tail fins for automobiles to express this new accelerated speed." Modernist home interiors look slick and shiny with their molded plastic furniture and linoleum floors. While clothing and furniture styles look strangely contemporary--a testament to our current obsession with vintage--some things have definitely changed. A baby sells Marlboro cigarettes! Also included are chapters on movies, food, and travel. --J.P. Cohen

Leafing through the pair is like walking through a massive design exhibition on the mores of those two decades. -- Los Angeles Times, 3/7/02

These bundles of history are more fun than smoking Chesterfields while driving a De Soto. -- Creativity, March 2002

They provide a record of American everyday life of a bygone era in a way that nothing else can. -- Associated Press, March 2002

Who would ever have imagined that ads could say so much about our recent past? -- Los Angeles Times, 3/7/02