When President Bush promoted shopping as a patriotic duty, the American culture of consumption hit a new low. But a quiet revolution is growing in the developing world and in a new generation of Americans, fighting the advance of the shopping malls and the desolation they leave behind. Written by one of the most insightful critics of American commercialism, The Business of America probes the forces that have transformed citizens into consumers eager to take as much as they can from the planet. From on-line shopping to spectator sports to the cash-and-carry ethos of political campaigns, Saul Landau decodes the subtle ways in which advertising images tell us to correct our inadequacies with more things: SUVs, credit cards, air conditioning, video games. The winds of change are blowing, Landau shows, from resurgent student protests for underpaid janitors to the Group of 21, the developing countries that stopped the World Trade Organization dead in its tracks in 2003. Eschewing nostalgia for a simpler time--a less-interconnected world that can never return-The Business of America shows how we as citizens can regain our identities, stripping away the plastic overlay of consumerism.

The book contains the results of research into primary sources and recent scholarship with an emphasis on leading personalities and anecdotes about them.

When I was a child my wonderful family were constantly telling me stories about their lives, adventures, wars they served in and wars they were to old or to young to fight or serve in. All past and current members of The United States Military are the reason America is free. We Patriots beat the King of England and the Founding Fathers created the most important document that has kept America free and that was the US Constitution. Throughout my life I have been a free American born American citizen. I owe that privilege and right and honor to every American signer of the US Constitution and every member of the United States Military from the Revolutionary War to today's date which includes most of my family members.