Background
Thomas Frank was born in 1965.
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States
Tom studied at the University of Chicago and received his Ph.D. (history).
Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank
(From the pages of The Baffler, the most vital and percept...)
From the pages of The Baffler, the most vital and perceptive new magazine of the nineties, sharp, satirical broadsides against the Culture Trust. In the "old" Gilded Age, the barons of business accumulated vast wealth and influence from their railroads, steel mills, and banks. But today it is culture that stands at the heart of the American enterprise, mass entertainment the economic dynamo that brings the public into the consuming fold and consolidates the power of business over the American mind.
https://www.amazon.com/Commodify-Your-Dissent-Salvos-Baffler-ebook/dp/B005BUCBBU/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(In this fascinating and revealing study, Thomas Frank sho...)
In this fascinating and revealing study, Thomas Frank shows how the youthful revolutionaries were joined - and even anticipated - by such unlikely allies as the advertising industry and the men's clothing business.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GN5OAO8/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(Thomas Frank has been sending wake-up calls to just about...)
Thomas Frank has been sending wake-up calls to just about everyone within reach over the past decade, in venues from The Village Voice to Harper's. Frank gives us a reading of cultural studies - viewed by some as an important new perspective in the academy, but by others as an unwieldy theoretical fad. Thomas Frank has been sending wake-up calls to just about everyone within reach over the past decade, in venues from The Village Voice to Harper's.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0971757542/?tag=2022091-20
2002
(With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank here turn...)
With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank here turns his eye on what he calls the 'thirty-year backlash' - the common man's revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. He charts the Republican party's success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests; between workers and bosses; between populists and right-wingers. Taking the state of Kansas as a paradigm, Frank describes how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union and, writing as a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: why do so many of us vote against our economic and social interests?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0436205394/?tag=2022091-20
2004
(In The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and c...)
In The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and corrupt Washington those politicians have given us. Casting his eyes from the Bush administration's final months of plunder to the earliest days of the Republican revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001ANYDLI/?tag=2022091-20
2008
(In a book that has been raising hackles far and wide, the...)
In a book that has been raising hackles far and wide, the social critic Thomas Frank skewers one of the most sacred cows of the go-go '90s: the idea that the new free-market economy is good for everyone. Frank's target is "market populism" - the widely held belief that markets are a more democratic form of organization than democratically elected governments. Refuting the idea that billionaire CEOs are looking out for the interests of the little guy, he argues that "the great euphoria of the late nineties was never as much about the return of good times as it was the giddy triumph of one America over another."
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0037BS30I/?tag=2022091-20
2010
(From the bestselling author of What's the Matter with Kan...)
From the bestselling author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, a wonderfully insightful and sardonic look at why the worst economy since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism Economic catastrophe usually brings social protest and demands for change - or at least it's supposed to. But when Thomas Frank set out in 2009 to look for expressions of American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession's victims and that society's traditional winners receive even grander prizes. The American Right, which had seemed moribund after the election of 2008, was strangely reinvigorated by the arrival of hard times. The Tea Party movement demanded not that we question the failed system but that we reaffirm our commitment to it. Republicans in Congress embarked on a bold strategy of total opposition to the liberal state.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005FWPMV0/?tag=2022091-20
2012
(It is the story of how the “Party of the People” detached...)
It is the story of how the “Party of the People” detached itself from its historic constituency among average Americans and chose instead to line up with the winners of our new economic order. Now with a new afterword, Thomas Frank’s powerful analysis offers the best diagnosis to date of the liberal malady. Drawing on years of research and firsthand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have over the last decades increasingly abandoned their traditional goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. With sardonic wit and lacerating logic, he uncovers the corporate and cultural elitism that have largely eclipsed the party’s old working- and middle-class commitment.
https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Liberal-Happened-Party-People/dp/1250118131/?tag=2022091-20
2017
(From the acclaimed author of Listen, Liberal and What’s t...)
From the acclaimed author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas, a scathing collection of his incisive commentary on our cruel times - perfect for this political moment What does a middle-class democracy look like when it comes apart? When, after forty years of economic triumph, America’s winners persuade themselves that they owe nothing to the rest of the country? With his sharp eye for detail, Thomas Frank takes us on a wide-ranging tour through present-day America, showing us a society in the late stages of disintegration and describing the worlds of both the winners and the losers - the sprawling mansion districts as well as the lives of fast-food workers. Rendezvous with Oblivion is a collection of interlocking essays examining how inequality has manifested itself in our cities, in our jobs, in the way we travel - and of course in our politics, wherein 2016, millions of anxious ordinary people rallied to the presidential campaign of a billionaire who meant them no good.
https://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Oblivion-Reports-Sinking-Society/dp/1250293669/?tag=2022091-20
2018
Thomas Frank was born in 1965.
Tom studied at the University of Chicago and received his Ph.D. (history).
Tom founded Baffler (newsletter) in 1988 and was its editor (with others). Bill Katz, discussing the Baffler in the Library Journal, commented that the newsletter is “a genuine rebel” compared to more mainstream publications, while Ink contributor David Daley called the periodical “a persuasive, passionate, and entirely peeved journal.” In 1997 Frank and Matt Wieland edited a selection of essays from the Baffler, Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler. Commodify Your Dissent is a “snarky, rude, and well-targeted analysis of the culture industry,” wrote Ana Marie Cox in Mother Jones. “I still think that the best Baffler collection is any given issue of the magazine (which I recommend without hesitation),” wrote Rain Taxi contributor Christopher Sorrentino, who added that Commodify Your Dissent is nonetheless “funny, infuriating, fresh, dogmatic, startling, (and) perceptive.”
In 1997 Frank’s The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism was published. An extended version of Frank’s graduate thesis, The Conquest of Cool chronicles the close ties between advertising and the counterculture in recent years. Booklist contributor David Rouse observed that “the many examples Frank uses to bolster his case make for a fascinating flashback.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that The Conquest of Cool “is frequently brilliant, an indispensable survival guide for any modern consumer.”
(From the acclaimed author of Listen, Liberal and What’s t...)
2018(From the bestselling author of What's the Matter with Kan...)
2012(In this fascinating and revealing study, Thomas Frank sho...)
1997(In a book that has been raising hackles far and wide, the...)
2010(It is the story of how the “Party of the People” detached...)
2017(With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank here turn...)
2004(Thomas Frank has been sending wake-up calls to just about...)
2002(From the pages of The Baffler, the most vital and percept...)
1997(In The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and c...)
2008Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all.
In his works, Frank lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years.
Frank argues that since the 1960s, the advertising industry has successfully used the image of a rebellious counterculture to promote the consumption of goods. The author notes the early success of the Volkswagen Beetle advertisements, whose understatement contrasted sharply with the hype common in automobile advertising from the 1950s and early 1960s. Frank claims that ads in more recent decades have used rebellion in sales pitches, touting “new” and “different” products to appeal to consumers wishing to be different.
Thomas Frank is known for his sardonic wit and lacerating logic.