Selling Leisure, Cosmetics, Fashion, Travel, and Entertainment
Adams, Bluford. E. Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman and the Making of U.S. Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Arnaldo Schwantes, Carlos. Railroad Nation: The Art of Selling America, 1825-1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2025.
Baker, Matthew. “Selling a State to a Nation: Boosterism and Utah’s First National Park.” Journalism History 36:3 (Fall 2010): 169-176.
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Baranowski, Shelly, and Ellen Furlough, eds. Being Elsewhere: Tourism, Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europe and North America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
Barringer, Mark Daniel. Selling Yellowstone: Capitalism and the Construction of Nature. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002.
Bell, David, and Joanne Hollows, eds. Historicizing Lifestyle: Mediating Taste, Consumption, and Identity from the 1900s to the 1970s. London: Routledge, 2006.
Blaszczyk, Regina Lee, ed. Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Blodgett, Peter. “Selling the Scenery: Advertising and the National Parks, 1916-1933,” in Seeing & Being Seen: Tourism in the American West, eds. David M. Wrobel and Patrick T. Long. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001.
Blodgett, Peter J. “Welcome to Wonderland: Promoting Tourism in the Rocky Mountain West, 1920-1960.” PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2007.
Brekke, Linzy A. “Fashioning America: Clothing, Consumerism, and the Politics of Appearance in the Early Republic.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2007.
Brekke-Aloise, Linzy. “A Very Pretty Business: Fashion and Consumer Culture in Antebellum American Prints.” Winterthur Portfolio 48: 2-3 (2014): 191-212.
Brown, Dona. Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.
Bubb, Daniel K. Landing in Las Vegas: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Tourist City. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2012.
Burke, Flannery. “Worry, U.S.A.: Dude Ranch Advertising Looks East, 1915-1945.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 69:2 (Summer 2019): 3-20.
Bushman, Richard L. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Knopf, 1992.
Butsch, Richard, ed. For Fun and Profit: The Transformation of Leisure into Consumption. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.*
Covey, Paul Michael. “Selling ‘the Things Money Can’t Buy’: Piano Advertising in the Mid-Twentieth Century.” Journal of the Society for American Music 13:1 (February 2019): 54-77.
Coward, John M. “Selling the Southwestern Indian: Ideology and Image in Arizona Highways, 1925-1940.” American Journalism 20:2 (2003): 13-31.
Cunningham, Patricia A. “From Underwear to Swimwear: Branding at Atlas and B.V.D. in the 1930s.” Journal of American Culture 32:1 (2009): 38-52.
Currell, Susan. The March of Spare Time: The Problem and Promise of Leisure in the Great Depression. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.
Desmond, Jane. “Picturing Hawai’i: The ‘Ideal’ Native and the Origins of Tourism, 1880-1915.” positions 7:2 (Fall 1999): 459-501.
Dobrow, Joe. Pioneers of Promotion: How Press Agents for Buffalo Bill, P.T. Barnum, and the World’s Columbian Exposition Created Modern Marketing. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018.
Dolan, Brian. Inventing Entertainment: The Player Piano and the Origins of an American Musical Industry. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009.
Duffy, Bernard K., and Susan Duffy. “Persuasion and Uplift in American Theatrical Advertising During the Depression.” Journal of American Culture 5:3 (Fall 1982): 66-71.
Dye, Victoria E. All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.
Engelman, Alysa Ream. “The Face That Haunts Me Ever: Consumers, Retailers, and the Branded Personality of Lydia E. Pinkham.” PhD dissertation, Boston University, 2003.
Erdman, Andrew L. Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals, and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004.
Feitz, Lindsey. “Democratizing Beauty: Avon’s Global Beauty Ambassadors and the Transnational Marketing of Femininity, 1954–2010.” PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, 2010.
Ferguson, Jill Hicks, Peggy J. Kreshel, and Spencer F. Tinkham. “In the Pages of Ms.: Sex Role Portrayals of Women in Advertising.” Journal of Advertising 19, no. 1 (1990): 40–51.
Fox, Charles Philip, and Tom Parkinson. Billers, Banners, and Bombast: The Story of Circus Advertising. Boulder: Pruett Publishing, 1985.
Freeland, David. Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Garner, Dwight. Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements. New York: Ecco, 2009.
Gassan, Richard. “The First American Tourist Guidebooks.” Book History 8 (2005): 51-74.
Gladden, Graham P. “Marketing Ocean Travel: Cunard and the White Star Line, 1910-1940.” Journal of Transport History 35:1 (June 2014): 57-77.
Gragg, Larry. “Selling ‘Sin City’: Successfully Promoting Las Vegas during the Great Depression, 1935–1941.” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 49 (Summer 2006): 83–106.
Greer, L. Sue. “The United States Forest Service and the Postwar Commodification of Outdoor Recreation.” In Richard Butsch, ed. For Fun and Profit: The Transformation of Leisure into Consumption. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
Gross, Richard S. Shopping all the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Grover, Kathryn, ed. Hard at Play: Leisure in America, 1840-1940. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.
Gruen, J. Philip. Manifest Destinations: Cities and Tourists in the Nineteenth-Century American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
Hardin, Robin, and Carol Zuegner. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Golf Balls: Magazine Promotion of Golf During the 1920s.” Journalism History 29:2 (Summer 2003): 82-90.
Havig, Alan. “The Commercial Amusement Audience in Early Twentieth-Century American Cities.” Journal of American Culture 5 (Spring 1982): 1-19.
Hayter, Edith Fletcher. Behind the Scenes in Fashion Merchandising. New York: Pageant Press, 1965.
Hill, Daniel Delis. As Seen in Vogue: A Century of American of American Fashion in Advertising. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004.
Humalajoki, Reetta. “Consumption as Assimilation: New York Times Reporting on Native American Art and Commodities, 1950–1970.” Journal of American Studies 53: 4 (2019): 972–996.
Huntley, Jen A. The Making of Yosemite: James Mason Hutchings and the Origin of America’s Most Popular National Park. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012.
Jakle, John A., and Keith A. Sculle. “The American Hotel in Postcard Advertising: An Image Gallery.” Material Culture 37 (Fall 2005): 1–25.
Jones, Karen R., and John Wills. The Invention of the Park: Recreational Landscapes from the Garden of Eden to Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005
Julin, Suzanne Barta. “Building a Vacationland: Tourism Development in the Black Hills during the Great Depression.” South Dakota History 35 (Winter 2005): 291–314.
Kasson, John F. Amusing the Million: Coney Island and Turn of the Century New York. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.
Kitch, Carolyn. “A Genuine, Vivid Personality: Newspaper Coverage and Construction of a ‘Real’ Advertising Celebrity in a Pioneering Publicity Campaign.” Journalism History 31:3 (Fall 2005): 122-137. (Phoebe Snow, Lackawanna Railroad)
Laurence, Senelick. “Pictures in Stone: Lithographed Trade Cards and the American Theatre.” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 25 (Spring 2013): 9–36.
McGee, Mark Thomas. Beyond Ballyhoo: Motion Pictures Promotion and Gimmicks. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1989.
McLennan, Sarah E. “Promoting Tourism, Selling a Nation: The Politics of Representing National Identity in the United States, 1930-1960.” PhD dissertation, College of William and Mary, 2015.
Mackintosh, Will. “‘Ticketed Through’: The Commodification of Travel in the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of the Early Republic 32 (Spring 2012): 67–89.
Mackintosh, Will B. “The Prehistory of the American Tourist Guidebook.” Book History 21:1 (2018): 89-124.
Macintosh, Will B. Selling the Sights: The Invention of the Tourist in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
Martin, James W. “The United Fruit Company’s Tourist Business and the Creation of the ‘Golden Caribbean,’ 1899-1940.” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 8:2 (2016): 238-262.
Mayham, Stephen L. Marketing Cosmetics; A Guide for the Manufacturer in Placing his Products Before the Stores and the Public. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938.
Meethan, Kevin. Tourism in a Global Society: Place, Culture, and Consumption. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Modleski, Tania, ed. Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1986.
Nasaw, David. Going Out. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
Nelson, David. “When Modern Tourism Was Born: Florida at the World Fairs and on the World Stage in the 1930s.” Florida Historical Quarterly 88 (Spring 2010): 435–468.
Nystrom, Paul Henry. Fashion Merchandising. New York: The Ronald Press, 1932.
Paoletti, Jo B. Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.
Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
Penner, Barbara. “A Vision of Love and Luxury: The Commercialization of Nineteenth-Century American Weddings.” Winterthur Portfolio 39:1 (Spring 2004): 1-20.
Petty, Ross J. “Peddling the Bicycle in the 1890s: Mass Marketing Shifts Into High Gear.” Journal of Macromarketing15:1 (Spring 1995): 32-46.
Pillen, Cory. “See America: WPA Posters and the Mapping of a New Deal Democracy.” Journal of American Culture 31 (March 2008): 49–65.
Popp, Richard K. “Domesticating Vacations: Gender, Travel, and Consumption in Post-War Magazines.” Journalism History 36:3 (Fall 2010): 126-137.
Popp, Richard K. The Holiday Makers: Magazines, Advertising, and Mass Tourism in Postwar America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012.
Rabinovitz, Lauren. Electric Dreamland: Amusement Parks, Movies, and American Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
Rosenzweig, Roy. Eight Hours For What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1980. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Rhodes, Gary D. “The Origin and Development of the American Movie Picture Poster.” Film History 19:3 (2007): 228-246.
Riordan, Teresa. Inventing Beauty: A History of the Innovations That Have Made Us Beautiful. New York: Broadway, 2004.
Rothman, Hal K. “Selling the Meaning of Place: Entrepreneurship, Tourism, and Commodity Transformation in the 20th Century American West.” Pacific Historical Review 65:4 (1996): 525-557.
Rothman, Hal K., ed. The Culture of Tourism, The Tourism of Culture: Selling the Past to the Present in the American Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003.
Rugh, Susan S. Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010.
Runte, A. “Promoting Wonderland: Western Railroads and the Evolution of National Park Advertising.” Journal of the West 31 (January 1992): 43-49.
Santangeli Valenzani, Giuliano. Great Times Down South: Deep South Tourism Promotion in the Carter Era. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2025.
Sasaki, Christen Tsuyuko. “Militourism and the Aloha Wear Industry in Hawaii.” American Quarterly 68:3 (2016): 643-667.
Schorman, Rob. “The Truth About Good Goods: Clothing, Advertising, and the Representation of Cultural Values at the End of the Nineteenth Century.” American Studies 37:1 (Spring 1996): 2-49.
Schorman, Rob. Selling Style: Clothing and Social Change at the Turn of the Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Schwantes, Carlos. “Landscapes of Opportunity: Phases of Railroad Promotion in the Pacific Northwest.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 43:2 (Spring 1993): 38-51.
Scranton, Philip, and Warren Belasco, eds. Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Shaffer, Marguerite S. See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940. Washington DC: Smithsonian, 2001.
Sloan, Nate. “Constructing Cab Calloway: Publicity, Race, and Performance in 1930s Harlem Jazz.” The Journal of Musicology 36, no. 3 (2019): 370–400.
Smith, Erik. “Selling Seattle’s First World’s Fair.” Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History 23:4 (Fall 2009): 4-12.
Sopcak- Joseph. “Fashioning American Women: Godey’s Lady’s Book, Female Consumers, and Periodical Publishing in the United States.” PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut, 2019.
Souther, J. Mark, and Nicholas Dagen Bloom, eds. American Tourism: Constructing a National Tradition. Chicago: Center for American Places, 2012.
Spears, Timothy B. “All Things to All Men: The Commercial Traveler and the Rise of Modern Salesmanship.” American Quarterly 45:4 (1993): 524-557.
Steiger, Eric. “Guaranteed Authentic: The Commodification of Culture through Tourism in the American Southwest.” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 53 (Fall–Winter 2010): 179–195.
Strauss, Bob, and Beverly Strauss. American Sporting Advertising. 2 vol. Camden, ME: Camden Printing, 1987-1990.
Sturges, Mark. “Consumption in the Adirondacks: Print Culture and the Curative Climate.” New York History 100:1 (Summer 2019): 109-135.
Sweeney, Russell C. Coming Next Week: A Pictorial History of Film Advertising. New York: Castle Books, 1973.
Swinney, John Bayly. Merchandising of Fashions: Policies and Methods of Successful Specialty Stores. New York: The Ronald Press, 1942.
Thurot, J.M. “Ideology and Class and Tourism: Confronting the Discourse of Advertising.” Annals of Tourism Research 10:1 (1983): 173-189.
Turpin, Robert J. First Taste of Freedom: A Cultural History of Bicycle Marketing in the United States. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2018.
Walsh, Margaret. “See This Amazing America: The Long Distance Bus Industry’s Use of Advertising in its First Quarter Century.” Journal of Transport History 11 (March 1990): 61-88.
Wrobel, David M., and Patrick T. Long, eds. Seeing & Being Seen: Tourism in the American West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001. Several essays refer to advertising/marketing/consumer culture related to tourism
Zega, Michael E. “Advertising the Southwest.” Journal of the Southwest 43 (Autumn 2001): 281-315.
Zega, Michael E., and John E. Gruber. Travel by Train: The American Railroad Poster. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.