“Joseph Malherek has written a marvelous intellectual and cultural history that traces the seemingly improbable linkages between the socialist ideals that flourished in Red Vienna and the consumer culture that reached its 20th-century apogee in post-World War II America. Among the many connections he illuminates, Malherek shows that without the remarkable influence of emigré socialists like Paul Lazarsfeld and Victor Gruen neither the shopping center, a planned, collaborative, commercial community, nor the marketing survey, which had its origins in socialist studies of class stratification, would have achieved their characteristic American form and pervasiveness.”
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