Matthew Schneirov - Böcker

This study explores how magazines became the first mass medium in the USA and how they expressed a new American culture based on "dreams" of a better future. Schneirov argues that the birth of the popular magazine at the turn of the century helped to form the foundations of contemporary consumer culture. Revolutionary concepts and products from the skyscraper to the automobile were extolled in these publications as symbols of the might of science and technology that would irrevocably change modern living. Photographs from 19th-and 20th-century magazines interspersed throughout the text illustrate the impetus to dream of a new social order.

Explores Americans' increasing attraction to alternative medicine by looking at two alternative health networks, one "New Age," the other conservative Christian.Despite having one of the most advanced systems of medicine in the world, American consumers are increasingly turning to alternative medicine. Through a study of two alternative health networks, one "New Age" and the other conservative Christian, A Diagnosis for Our Times examines the health regimes followed by clients of alternative practitioners, the way people find meaning in non-Western and pre-modern health traditions, and the relationship between alternative health and other movements for change. In sharp contrast with other work on this subject, this book characterizes alternative health as a social movement and a "cultural laboratory" where people discover new values and new ways of living that may have larger implications. The authors discover surprising commonalities between the cultural left and the religious right when it comes to healthcare, and they evaluate the potential of alternative health to contribute to a new healthcare paradigm.