Karal Ann Marling, Professor of Art History at the University of Minnesota, is the author of, among other books,
As Seen on TV and Graceland: Going Home with Elvis (both from Harvard).
Review
"[Marling] offers in seven chapters some witty riffs on 50s themes: the topics evoked in As Seen on TV
are, in order, women's fashion, amateur painting, the arrival of Disneyland, those fabulous finned autos, the taming
of Elvis Presley, home cooking and Richard Nixon's 'kitchen debate' with Nikita Khrushchev...[It is] an intellectual
romp, a dizzying free fall through the exuberant 'visual culture' of that first post-World War II decade."
--John Updike, New York Times Book Review
"Irresistible...Karal Ann Marling's enthusiasm is refreshing, entertaining and imaginative. Her energy is
infectious...She manages to make the decade that time forgot come alive."
--Karen Stabiner, Los Angeles Times
"In this entertaining and informative book, Marling uses a variety of visual icons of the 1950s to depict
the decade as an ocean of vibrant color, movement and style...[She] is one of this country's strongest advocates
of the study of popular culture. She is also one of our most eloquent analysts of the meanings to be found in objects.
Her book's multilayered, dizzying descriptions...plunge the reader into a culture drunk on color and form. They
testify to the complex cultural significance with which Americans in the postwar years invested commonplace objects
and images. They also blur the lines between aesthetics and sociology...Marling's full and convincing interpretations
of the objects under discussion exhibit both humor and empathy."
--Tinky "Dakota" Weisblat, Boston Globe
"This is a gorgeous confection of a book...As Seen on TV manages to plug directly into the more mundane fads
and fashions of popular culture."
--Angela McRobbie, New Statesman and Society
"Karal Ann Marling's book is an invitation to celebrate the dawning of the world as television...[She] lovingly
guides us through this landscape, the world of what design critic Thomas Hine called the 'populuxe,' glitz and
glitter for the postwar masses...The whole period has found a sympathetic chronicler in Marling and her account
of the influence of television on 1950s America makes for fascinating reading."
--Gareth Stanton, Times Higher Education Supplement
"As Seen on TV combines high seriousness and just plain fun. It's a pleasure to read...Marling is as mercilessly
convincing as she is witty and bright. Her stinging portrait of the 1950s easily extends beyond that much-satirized
decade, enabling us to see its primitive reflection in today's popular culture and mass markets."
--Joseph F. Keppler, Seattle Times
"As Seen on TV offers fresh, imaginative readings of individual artifacts, particularly Betty Crocker's Picture
Cook Book and television commercials for automobiles. Moving Beyond text to context, chapters on the ongoing spectacle
at Disneyland and the one-time-only 'Kitchen Debate' between Nixon and Khruschev provide suggestive rereadings
of familiar topics. [The book] becomes most interesting when imaginatively leaping from one set of cultural products
or practices to another. It glides from Mamie Eisenhower's New Look to the 'Chemise' or 'sack dress'..As Seen on
TV draws on an extensive, eclectic array of sources: presidential archives, museum collections, business publications,
scholarly accounts, popular histories, and even the responses of listeners to Professor Marling's appearances on
radio talk shows."
--Norman L. Rosenberg, Reviews in American History
Harvard University Press Web Site, January, 2002
Summary
From the paint-by-numbers fad, to the public fascination with Mamie Eisenhower's apparel, to the visual explosion
that was Elvis Presley on stage, As Seen On TV explores what Americans saw and what they looked for during
television's first golden era, the 1950s.
