Books like The mirror makers by Stephen R. Fox

A fresh, compelling take on the beloved classic tale of Snow White and the seven dwarfs, set in Renaissance Italy.

Eva and Gideon’s passionate, tumultuous romance blurs the line between desire and obsession, drawing from their shared pasts and mutual need to explore the limits of love and longing.

Elizabeth Alexander, a celebrated African‑American poet, chronicles the profound grief and renewal she finds after her husband’s sudden death, offering a moving memoir of loss, family, and the search for meaning.

American advertisements have become perhaps the most pervasive social icons in the modern world. This book traces their rise against a richly varied backdrop. Its range encompasses literature, religion, and the visual arts, as well as economics, public policy, and the history of medicine. Its cast of characters includes a host of remarkable figures in or around advertising, from P. T. Barnum and Theodore Dreiser to John B. Watson and Joseph Cornell. The book explores the ways that advertising collaborated with other cultural institutions to produce what have become the dominant aspirations, anxieties, and even notions of personal identity in the twentieth-century United States. Moving from the carnivals and market fairs of Renaissance Europe to the traveling peddlers of nineteenth-century America, Jackson Lears shows how early advertisers encouraged a new kind of magical thinking, detached from religious traditions and geared to an emerging market society. While patent medicine advertising's promise of magical self-transformation and exotic sensuality posed challenges to moral standards, advertisers themselves eventually sought to contain the subversive potential of this promise even as they continued to conjure it up.

"Dogs eat burritos, camels smoke cigarettes, and frogs drink beer. Welcome to the Century of the Consumer. In the 20th century, Americans were romanced by consumer culture, which in turn reflected the changing attitudes, priorities, and values of the country. This book compiles entries on 100 consumer products - ten per decade - that figured prominently in the rise of consumer culture in the United States, telling the story behind the century's most popular products, slogans, and symbols." "A unique format provides glimpses into American popular culture from each decade in the century. In addition to the history of advertising, economics, and the media, students will learn how perceptions of class, gender, and race were conveyed through advertising - and how those perceptions have changed from 1900 to 2000. A-Z entries for each decade include bibliographic information on the product, as well as vivid illustrations showing the visual evolution of advertising icons and strategies throughout the century."--Jacket.