The Attention Merchants : The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (Paperback)

from nmele

Wu seems to have taken the lazy road when writing his second book--it's just a not very stimulating, although fairly informative, history of advertising and public relations. Although he refers to his first book throughout this one, Wu nods to the right sources and all that, but he ventures no ne...

from LynnB

This book is basically a history of advertising...from the time of snake oil salesmen to the early days of newspapers, through to radio, television and the internet. It looks at how advertisers and marketers have learned to use various media to capture our attention so that they can inform and pe...

from gbelik

Basically a history of advertising, this saga of those who want to grab our attention for their own interests was a good summary, taking us all the way from patent medicine salesmen to the current media.

from TeaTimeCoder

Learned an awful lot reading it. Fantastic summary of the history of advertising seamlessly extending into the present and explaining some of the insanity of the current situation. Unfortunately due to how short it is it has to be very selective and skips over a lot really interesting topics (ri...