Books by Lawrence R. Samuel

Widely considered the most complex of human emotions, romantic love both shapes and reflects core societal values, its expression offering a window into the cultural zeitgeist. Tracing the history of love in American culture, this book offers insight into both the national character and emotional nature.

Capitalizing on what is arguably the most important social phenomenon of our time and place-the aging of America-this book shows organizations how to market specifically to baby boomers in their third act of life.The graying of America is undeniable, with an estimated 10,000 boomers turning 65 every day. But to dismiss the baby boomer generation as a group no longer worth marketing to would be foolish. According to the Census Bureau, in 2029-the year when the last boomer will have turned 65-there will still be more than 61 million boomers, roughly 17 percent of the projected population of the United States. Boomers will still be the wealthiest generation in the United States until at least 2030, according to the Deloitte Center for Financial Services, with their share of net household wealth to peak at 50.2 percent by 2020.Boomers 3.0: Marketing to Baby Boomers in Their Third Act of Life describes how to market to baby boomers from a cultural perspective, specifically addressing the demographic group of baby boomers in their later adulthood-a period that will continue for the next two to three decades. The author uses the term "3.0" to indicate the baby boomers' third phase of life and explains how this third act of life will differ from earlier periods; accordingly, organizations should take a different approach to marketing to them than in the past. This book offers a way to contextualize business objectives within a culturally based, forward-thinking framework that fully leverages the opportunities presented by what is perhaps the biggest and most affluent customer base in history. Readers will be able to use the strategies described to map territories to stake and mine in targeting boomers, create meaningful relationships with individuals in this group, and communicate effectively with boomers to offer them products and services.

The American writer--both real and fictitious, famous and obscure--has traditionally been situated on the margins of society, an outsider looking in. From The Great Gatsby''s Nick Carraway to the millions of bloggers today, writers are generally seen as onlookers documenting the human condition. Yet their own collective story has largely gone untold. Tracing the role of the writer in the United States over the last century, this book describes how those who use language as a creative medium have held a special place in our collective imagination.

Happiness in America: A Cultural History is a cultural history of happiness in the United States. The book charts the role of happiness in everyday life over the past century and concludes that Americans have never been a particularly happy people. Samuel suggests readers abandon their pursuit of happiness and instead seek out greater joy in life.

Future Trends: A Guide to Decision Making and Leadership in Business links decision-making and leadership to trends pointing to the future. By identifying sixty global, long-term trends and detailing how businesspeople can leverage them in both the short- and long-term, the book offers a powerful body of knowledge unavailable anywhere else.

The history of our attitudes toward the possibilities of tomorrow:';A fascinating trek through American future visions from the 1920s to the present.' Lori C. Walters, Ph.D., University of Central Florida The future is not a fixed idea but a highly variable one that reflects the values of those who are imagining it. By studying the ways that visionaries imagined the futureparticularly that of Americain the past century, much can be learned about the cultural dynamics of the times. In this social history, Lawrence R. Samuel examines the future visions of intellectuals, artists, scientists, businesspeople, and others to tell a chronological story about the history of the future in the past century. He defines six separate eras of future narratives from 1920 to the present day, and argues that the milestones reached during these yearsespecially related to air and space travel, atomic and nuclear weapons, the women's and civil rights movements, and the advent of biological and genetic engineeringsparked the possibilities of tomorrow in the public's imagination, and helped make the twentieth century the first century to be significantly more about the future than the past. The idea of the future grew both in volume and importance as it rode the technological wave into the new millennium, and the author tracks the process by which most people, to some degree, have now become futurists as the need to anticipate tomorrow accelerates.

';A lively history' of how TV advertising became a defining force in American culture between 1946 and 1964(Technology and Culture). The two decades following World War II brought television into homes and, of course, television commercials. Those commercials, in turn, created an image of the postwar American Dream that lingers to this day. This book recounts how advertising became a part of everyday lives and national culture during this midcentury period, not only reflecting consumers' desires but shaping them, and broadcasting a vivid portrait of comfort, abundance, ease, and happy family life and, of course, keeping up with the Joneses. As the author asserts, it's nearly impossible to understand our culture without contemplating these visual celebrations of conformity and consumption, and this insightful, entertaining volume of social history helps us do just that.

The American Way of Life is a cultural history of the American Way of Life (or more simply the American Way). The book argues that since the term was popularized in the 1930s, the American Way has served as the primary guiding mythology or national ethos of the United States.

Aging in America traces the story of aging over the course of the last half century, demonstrating our culture's negative attitudes toward a natural and inevitable human process and offering a deep understanding of the subject's past in order to help anticipate its future.

Freud on Madison Avenue tells the story of how and why mid-twentieth-century advertisers adopted Freudian psychology to sell products. This study follows the careers of Paul Lazarsfeld, Herta Herzog, James Vicary, Alfred Politz, Pierre Martineau, Edward Bernays, and the father of motivational research, Ernest Dichter.

Sexidemic is the first real cultural history of sexuality in the United States since the end of World War II. For a people who supposedly love sex, the author argues, Americans have had no shortage of problems with it. Since the end of World War II, in fact, weΓÇÖve had a contentious relationship with sexuality, the subject a source of considerable tension and controversy on both an individual and societal level. Rather than being a simple pleasure of life, something to be enjoyed, sex has served as a challenging and disruptive force in many AmericansΓÇÖ everyday lives for the last two-thirds of a century. Our love affair with sex has thus been a rocky one, filled with bumps in the road that have caused major instability across our cultural landscape. Our individualistic, competitive, consumerist, and anxious national character is both reflected in and reinforced by this ΓÇ£sexidemic,ΓÇ¥ something few have recognized or perhaps want to admit. By charting the cultural trajectory of sex in America since the end of World War II, Sexidemic reveals how the nationΓÇÖs continual woes with sexuality helped make us an anxious, insecure people. The sex lives of many, perhaps most Americans have been in a perpetual state of crisis, a constant source of concern. WeΓÇÖve fretted over every dimension of it, with problems in both quality and quantity. With this unhealthy view of sexuality, it was not surprising that we felt we needed a variety of potions and gadgets to make it happen or be pleasurable. In tracing the cultural trajectory of sex in our society, Samuel illustrates our bipolar approach to sexuality: low libido and sex addiction emerged as common disorders, and sex scandal after sex scandal has made headlines, especially over the last couple of years. Only money has surpassed sex as a source of stress for Americans; indeed, sex has come to be seen and treated as a commodity. In this timely work, the author traces the role sex plays in our society, how it shapes us and the world around us, and how we got where we are today in our views, treatment, and practice of sex and sexuality in our everyday lives.

Arriving on the scene at around the same time as the modern idea of the self, psychoanalysis has both shaped and reflected the ascent of individualism in American society. Samuel traces its path from the theories of Freud and Jung to the innermost reaches of our current me-based, narcissistic culture.

This book is much more than an authoritative and compelling look at the cultural history of the supernatural over the last century in America-it also explains why we want to believe.

This book traces changes in what it means to be a dad in America, from the 1960s through today. Beginning with an overview of fatherhood in America from the "founding fathers" through the 1950s, the book progresses to the role of fathers as they were encouraged to move beyond being simply providers to becoming more engaged parents.