Description
Book SynopsisShows how the evolution of the greeting card reveals the fundamental power of economic organization to enable and constrain experiences of longing, status, desire, social connectedness, and love and to structure and determine the most private, internal, and intimate of feelings. This book covers the development of the greeting card industry.
Trade ReviewThis volume will be a useful addition to marketing and social sciences collections... Recommended Choice An intellectually rich, deeply researched history of mass-produced consumer good whose success depends on its ability to connect people emotionally. -- David Farber Enterprise & Society A carefully detailed history... An interesting read. Antiques & The Arts Weekly This well-written and nicely illustrated book illuminates how the imagery in greeting cards has reflected overt and covert classist assumptions. -- Cele C. Otnes Journal of American History A carefully detailed history. Antiques and the Arts Weekly A Token of My Affection is an important work of American studies and contributes much to business history. -- Catherine Gudis American Studies A beautifully illustrated, painstakingly researched book... [a] smart, ambitious, innovative study. -- Lori Merish American Historial Review
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Structured Feelings amid Circulations of the Heart 1. Vicious Sentiments: Nineteenth-Century Valentines and the Sentimental Production of Class Boundaries 2. The Nineteenth-Century Christmas Card: The Chromo-Reproduction of Sentimental Value 3. Corporate Sentiment: The Rise of the Twentieth-Century Greeting Card Industry and the American Culture of Business 4. Condensation, Displacement, and Masquerade: The Dream-Work of Greeting Cards 5. Knitting the Social Lace: The Use of Greeting Cards 6. All This Senseless Rationality: Beyond the End of the Modern Era of Greeting Cards Notes Bibliography Index
