Review by Choice Review
O'Shaughnessy (marketing, Univ. of Keele, UK) has chosen to consider an important phenomenon, as is evident from his title, but to do so in a slick, superficial manner, as is evident from his subtitle. As a result, his book is uneven. O'Shaughnessy has surveyed a great deal of what has been written on the subject and has provided an accurate summary. He has unfortunately not supplied a serious analysis of a genuine problem. Where he attempts to understand, for example, the classical Greek conception of rhetoric, he follows a practitioner such as Gorgias rather than a philosopher such as Plato, whom he nevertheless misconstrues. O'Shaughnessy's exposition of myth is idiosyncratic, although he does provide some interesting interpretations from contemporary political advertising. The discussions of single-issue groups and the "New Labour" of Tony Blair are insightful; his opinions regarding the Iraq war are both uninformed with respect to geostrategic realities and hostile to US foreign policy. In short, the author seems to think that propaganda is a substitute for political reality. ^BSumming Up: Optional. Graduate and research collections. B. Cooper University of Calgary
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
