Background
Thomas Frank was born in 1965.
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...)
2010Frank 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.
