1. Apostles of modernity -- Picking up the tempo -- Practical heroics and versatility -- Erasing the Barnum image -- The advertisement becomes "modern" -- Side by side with the consumer -- Three legends in the making -- Selling satisfactions -- 2. Men of the people : the new professionals -- Two routes to professionalism -- Ambassadors of the consumer -- Atypical men, and women -- The agency subculture : courtiers and creators -- Competition, craftsmanship, and cynicism -- Benign deceptions -- 3. Keeping the audience in focus -- Keys to the consumer mind : confessions and tabloids -- The matinee crowd -- The limits of consumer citizenship -- Sizing up the constituency : the feminine masses -- "Oh, what do the simple folk like?" -- "Getting to know them" -- In search of the typical consumer -- Feedback from secondary audiences -- Folk wisdom, uplift, and the irresponsible public

4. Abandoning the great genteel hope : from sponsored radio to the funny papers -- Sponsorship only : radio as cultural uplift -- Super-advertising and the specter of saturation -- Interweaving the commercial -- Crooners and commercials : from intrusion to intimacy -- Entertainment triumphs : the descent into the funny papers -- 5. The consumption ethic : strategies of art and style -- Advertising and the color explosion -- Uplifted tastes and borrowed atmospheres -- The mystique of the ensemble -- Modern art and advertising dynamics -- Photography as sincerity -- Art and the consumption ethic -- Progressive obsolescence -- The gospel of the full cereal bowl

6. Advertisements as social tableaux -- The concept of a social tableau -- Modern woman as businesswoman : "the little woman, G.P.A." -- Leisure, for what? -- Grotesque moderne -- Anticipations of superwoman : finessing the contradictions of modernity -- The businessman as generic man -- Supporting players -- Social class in advertising tableaux -- Modern maids and atavistic ambitions -- 7. The great parables -- The parable of the first impression -- The parable of the democracy of goods -- The parable of civilization redeemed -- The parable of the captivated child -- Guideposts to a modern "logic of living" -- 8. Visual clich©♭s : fantasies and icons -- Fantasies of domain : the office window and the family circle -- Fantasies of dimension : the future and the eternal village -- Visual clich©♭s as icons

9. Advertising in overalls : parables and visual clich©♭s of the depression -- Retrenchment and morale boosting -- The depression as sales argument : some parables revisited -- Parables of the depression : unraised hands and skinny kids -- Depression advertising as a shift in style -- Upstart agencies with that depression touch -- Ballyhoo, organized consumers, and the New Deal -- Medicine man tactics and self-esteem -- Success, advertising men, and the courage quotient -- Economic sunbeams : reassurance and inspiration -- Clenched fists -- 10. The therapeutics of advertising -- Urbanity and complexity : the problem of scale -- Proliferating choices and the vacuum of advice -- Advertising advice and added values -- Toward a new incompetence -- The "re- personalization" of American life -- Finessing the complexities of scale