Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Vance Packard
Why Do Candles Still Exist?
Episode Transcript DUBNER: Do you find it strange at all that so many people still love candles? I mean, ever since we got electricity, candles have been non-essential, let’s call them, right? An obsolete technology. But they have not disappeared. Every generation seems to rediscover them. Why do you think that is? Steve HORENZIAK: Yeah, it’s a very interesting question. It’s interesting to think about how the job that candles do has changed over time.
How Does the Lost World of Vienna Still Shape Our Lives?
Episode 22 From politics and economics to psychology and the arts, many of the modern ideas we take for granted emerged a century ago from a single European capital. In this episode of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, the historian Richard Cockett explores all those ideas — and how the arrival of fascism can ruin in a few years what took generations to build.
How Does the Lost World of Vienna Still Shape Our Lives?
Once upon a time, there was a place that was so dynamic that it seemed as if the future had already arrived. Richard COCKETT: They were trying to take all the most modern disciplines — physiology, medicine, mathematics, statistics — and apply all these new disciplines to building a new civilization. You may think I’m talking about someplace like ancient Athens, or Alexandria. But no, this was much more recent — during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And: it didn’t last.
The Naked Society
Have you ever got that nasty feeling that you are being watched? Watched wherever you are, wherever you go, whatever you do? I just finished a novel by James Patterson, called The Store, about which one reviewer had this to say: ‘This book is creepy because the premise is very real … Anything that you do online tells the world a little more about you. That information can b... Read full book review
7 Best Anti Tracking Software for Better Online Privacy
This is our round-up of the best AntiTrack software to wipe your digital traces clean. Most advertisers, in a nutshell, are cruel manipulators. However harsh that may sound to someone, that’s a simple reality. Advertising repeatedly hammers your subconscious mind with products that you seldom need. These products assure Success, claim themselves as Smart Choice, and try to pull you Emotionally until you hit the dreaded Buy. It all starts with a casual (Google) search.
7 Best Anti Tracking Software for Better Online Privacy
This is our round-up of the best AntiTrack software to wipe your digital traces clean. Most advertisers, in a nutshell, are cruel manipulators. However harsh that may sound to someone, that’s a simple reality. Advertising repeatedly hammers your subconscious mind with products that you seldom need. These products assure Success, claim themselves as Smart Choice, and try to pull you Emotionally until you hit the dreaded Buy. It all starts with a casual (Google) search.
THE STATUS SEEKERS
A study of our social structure today, the class labels we attach and social lines we pursue, probably does not have the elements of jolting revelation of The Hidden Persuaders (i.e. big popular potential); but the Vance Packard name, along with the established penchant for abrasive self-appraisal (John Keats, William H. White, Jr., etc.) should give this breakdown of our social and behavioral attitudes its calculable elements of success.
Unmasking the Hidden Persuaders --- The Conspiracy To Make Us Buy eBook: Jeffrey Robinson: Kindle Store
It wasn’t by chance that the 1960s became “The Swinging ‘60s.” Nor was it by chance that what happened on Madison Avenue in the years leading up to “The Mad Men” Decade --- when Vance Packard wrote “The Hidden Persuaders” --- and what has happened as a result of those years, has changed the world. This is a story about casting spells. About filling our heads with some catchy tune or a neat slogan that will throb gently in the hidden layers of our brain.
The Waste Makers
In the last century, we have moved from a society of people who avoided waste to one in which we throw away things without the slightest consideration about the resources we are wasting and how that is affecting our environment as well as our own well-being. And we often don’t even know that we are doing it. The Waste Makers, written by Vance Packard and publish...
The Best Books on Political Spin
recommended by David Greenberg Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency by David Greenberg It's as old as Plato's Gorgias, but it was Richard Nixon who really got it down to a fine art.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Vance
Contact Vance, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack