Daniel Thomas Cook is a sociologist in the Department of Advertising at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He is the editor of Symbolic Childhood.
Blending the sociologist's theoretical rigor with the historian's attention to detail and change, Daniel Thomas Cook offers us a striking and original explanation of how twentieth-century notions of childhood together with new marketing practices led to the modern autonomous child. --Gary Cross, author of The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children's Culture Daniel Thomas Cook's The Commodification of Childhood is a pioneering and major contribution to our understanding of consumer culture. On the basis of his detailed and fascinating examination of children's clothing marketing through the twentieth century, Cook constructs a larger template for understanding the complex and evolving relations between consumers and marketers. The theoretical discussions are a tour de force. A must-read for all scholars of consumer society. --Juliet B. Schor, author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need