Stephen Fox, a freelance writer, is the author of Big Leagues: Professional Baseball, Football, and Basketball in National Memory; Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America; and other books.

"A fascinating account of what well may be this country's most characteristic institution."--Andrew Hacker, New York Times Book Review "Academic masterpiece."--Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men "You don't have to be in the life to relish this mosaic portrait of the art-craft-business-profession that has mirrored and also shaped American culture since 1880."--Publishers Weekly "I've used this book in my undergraduate and graduate classes for more than five years. It's an engaging treatment of a dynamic subject, and students warm to it quickly."--Kim B. Rotzoll, author of Advertising in Contemporary Society: Perspectives Toward Understanding "Arguably the best general history of advertising."--New York Review of Books